Public Health Genomics Approach to Type 2 Diabetes
- Muin J. Khoury1,
- Rodolfo Valdez1 and
- Ann Albright2
- 1National Office of Public Health Genomics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia
- 2Division of Diabetes Translation, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia
- Corresponding author: Muin J. Khoury, muk1{at}cdc.gov
Type 2 diabetes is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide (1). In the last 15 years, the number of people in the U.S. with diagnosed diabetes has more than doubled. Strong risk factors for type 2 diabetes include age, sex, obesity, physical inactivity, and family history (2). Several measured genetic variants have recently emerged as risk factors for type 2 diabetes. In this commentary, we discuss the impact of new gene discoveries on prediction and prevention of type 2 diabetes. We propose that the new multidisciplinary field of public health genomics can help translate gene discoveries into appropriate actions to reduce the burden of type 2 diabetes in the population.
Role of genetic factors in type 2 diabetes.
It has long been recognized that type 2 diabetes runs in families even though only a few diabetes-related genetic diseases have been identified (3). Until recently, the quest for genetic susceptibility to type 2 diabetes has frustrated researchers. Since the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 (4), and the Haplotype Mapping (HapMap) Project in 2005 (5), the stage was set for using large-scale collaborative genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to search for genetic factors for many common diseases of public health importance, including type 2 diabetes (6). Since 2007, the scientific community has begun to reap the benefits of GWAS, with >170 studies published and many replicated genetic “hits” found across the genome for a variety of common diseases. These findings fuel expectations that genetic factors can be used to construct susceptibility profiles that will help in the prediction, prevention, and early detection of human diseases, thus ushering in a new era of personalized health care and disease prevention (7).
Current findings on the genetics of type 2 diabetes.
In this issue, van Hoek et al. (8) and Lango et al. (9) take GWAS findings in type 2 diabetes to the next logical level by …
