Every sixth Indian is a potential diabetic: CCMB study

Hyderabad: A new study has revealed that every sixth person in India is a potential diabetic.

This risk is due to ancestral-specific genes. This was found after various genes were studied.

"The study found population-specific differences in genetic susceptibility to Type 2 Diabetes. These results pave the way towards the development of ancestry-specific genetic risk scores for risk prediction in different populations and have immense implications for Indians, where every sixth individual is a potential diabetic," said Dr. Chandak, Chief Scientist at CSIR – Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CSIR – CCMB) and one of the lead investigators.

Titled `DIAMANTE' (DIAbetes Meta-Analysis of Trans-Ethnic association studies), the study was co-led by Prof. Andrew Morris of the University of Manchester. It has been published in `Nature Genetics'.

The global prevalence of Type 2 Diabetes, a familial disease with severe morbidity has increased four-fold over the last 3 decades. South Asia, especially India and China are majorly affected by the spurt. Indians are especially at risk of Type 2 Diabetes because they are centrally obese. It means fat around the abdomen. Fat around their visceral organs is more insulin resistant right from birth. This is in contrast to the Europeans who are overall fat in a generalized manner. Despite this fact, the largest studies to understand the genetic basis of Type 2 Diabetes have mostly been conducted on populations of European ancestry.

Dr. Chandak said scientists from different parts of the world put together their minds to understand similarities and differences in genetic susceptibility to Type 2 Diabetes in different populations. His group had earlier provided evidence of greater genetic heterogeneity in Indians compared to Europeans, which compromises our ability to predict Type 2 Diabetes Risk in the Indian populations using European data.

This recent study compared the genomic DNA of 1.8 lakh people with Type 2 Diabetes against 11.6 lakh normal subjects from five ancestries – Europeans, East Asians, South Asians, Africans, and Hispanics, and identified a large number of genetic differences (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms or SNPs) between patients and the normal subjects.

"This study sets up the stage for further investigating the South Asian population for genetic susceptibility to Type 2 Diabetes and extends the journey on the path of precision medicine," said Dr. Vinay Nandicoori, Director, CCMB.