NurseWeek

Researchers link new gene to diabetes risk

By Valerie Harris, MS, OTR
October 16, 2000


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Houston. Researchers at the University of Texas-Houston Health Science Center and the University of Chicago announced the discovery of a gene linked to the risk of Type 2 diabetes.

"It’s the first time a group has taken a view of the entire human genome and successfully identified one such gene," said researcher Graeme Bell, Ph.D., Louis Block professor of biochemistry, molecular biology and medicine at the University of Chicago.

Bell is an investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Chicago.

The research drew on data from Mexican-American residents of Starr County. After a decade of collaboration, the rsearchers discovered CAPN10, a gene that accounts for 14 percent of the prevalence of Type 2 diabetes in Mexican Americans and about 4 percent in Europeans.

"It defines a new biochemical pathway that is involved in the regulation of blood glucose levels," Bell said.

The gene interacts with other genes and environmental factors and has a small effect, but should hold the key to a greater understanding of the genetic components of Type 2 diabetes and facilitate faster discovery of other genes, said researcher Craig Hanis, Ph.D., professor of biological sciences at UT-Houston HSC.

"We believe that this is a pathway that we can exploit for treatment that we didn’t know about before," Hanis said.

The findings were published in the October issue of Nature Genetics.

Type 2 diabetes, also known as adult onset diabetes and noninsulin-dependent diabetes, affects 15 million Americans and is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States.