The New Perspectives on Genetic Studies of Type 2 Diabetes and Thyroid Diseases

Title:The New Perspectives on Genetic Studies of Type 2 Diabetes and Thyroid Diseases

Volume: 14 Issue: 1

Author(s): Min Xu, Yufang Bi, Bin Cui, Jie Hong, Weiqing Wang and Guang Ning

Affiliation:

Keywords: Genome wide association study, Gene-environmental interaction, Hyperthyroidism, Risk prediction, Type 2 diabetes

Abstract: Recently, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have led to the discovery of hundreds of susceptibility loci that are associated with complex metabolic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and hyperthyroidism. The majority of the susceptibility loci are common across different races or populations; while some of them show ethnicity-specific distribution. Though the abundant novel susceptibility loci identified by GWAS have provided insight into biology through the discovery of new genes or pathways that were previously not known, most of them are in introns and the associated variants cumulatively explain only a small fraction of total heritability. Here we reviewed the genetic studies on the metabolic disorders, mainly type 2 diabetes and hyperthyroidism, including candidate genes-based findings and more recently the GWAS discovery; we also included the clinical relevance of these novel loci and the gene-environmental interactions. Finally, we discussed the future direction about the genetic study on the exploring of the pathogenesis of the metabolic diseases.

Cite this article as:

Xu Min, Bi Yufang, Cui Bin, Hong Jie, Wang Weiqing and Ning Guang, The New Perspectives on Genetic Studies of Type 2 Diabetes and Thyroid Diseases, Current Genomics 2013; 14 (1) . https://dx.doi.org/10.2174/138920213804999138