보건복지부 영문홈페이지

NIH discovered new genetic markers for Type 2 diabetes

- The research result will be published in the January 2012 issue of Nature Genetics (IF 34.28), one of the world’s best academic journals

Korea National Institute of Health (NIH, Director General Cho, Myung Chan) informed that 8 new genetic markers that affect Type 2 diabetes were discovered from a NIH-led joint research of whole genome meta analysis participated by 7 countries (Korea, Singapore, Japan, China, Taiwan, US and Hong Kong) through the Asian Genetic Epidemiology Network (AGEN) which was founded in 2009. (Refer to the attachment. 1) 

So far 49 genetic markets related to Type 2 diabetes had been discovered from research mostly conducted on Europeans and in this research, the existing genetic markers were re-confirmed and 8 new genetic markers concerning Asian people were newly discovered. (Refer to the attachment 2.)

Among the eight genetic markers newly discovered this time, six genetic markers were confirmed to have a strong impact on Type 2 diabetes in Asians and from a great difference in the frequency of the marker alleles between Europeans and Asians, it was found that their impact on the development of Type 2 diabetes in Asian people is different than that on Europeans.

Type 2 diabetes is known to be a disease highly affected by family history and it increases the risks of cardiovascular disease, peripheral vascular disease, and stroke, etc. As micro vascular complications of diabetes, retina, kidney, and nervous system are seriously damaged, significantly affecting quality of lives of adults in their middle and late ages.

Nation-wide measures are required for efficient prevention and control of diabetes as this disease can add a great burden to the national health in Korea which has become an aging society.

Particularly, the rates of prevalence of Type 2 diabetes recently tend to be rapidly growing in Asian countries, calling for urgent actions for effective control of the disease not just in Korea and but also other countries in and around the Asian region.  

The genetic markers for Type 2 diabetes discovered this time are expected to be highly useful in predicting and preventing the development of Type 2 diabetes, studying the mechanism of the development of the disease, and developing medicines for diabetes, etc based on genetic information by individual.

NIH has been running long-term programs such as a cohort study program on genetic epidemiology and Koreans’ genome analysis project since 2001, based upon which it discovered and confirmed the genetic markers related to Type 2 diabetes uniquely found in Asians only through the global joint research.

This global joint research is a large scale genome study regarding Type 2 diabetes conducted upon 54,000 Asian people and its result will be published in the January 2012 issue of Nature Genetics (IF 34.28), the world’s best academic journal in the concerned field.