CHENNAI: An international team led by researchers at IIT-Madras has identified a variant of a gene that increases the risk of diabetes, hypertension and coronary heart disease in Indians and other south Asians by 1.5 times.
The researchers studied the gene chromogranin A in healthy people and individuals with cardiovascular diseases and found that the latter had a gene variation due to mutation.
Of the 4,300 people studied, 15% who included south and north Indians and other south Asians, had the variant, which made them susceptible to cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.
Researchers said the identification of the genetic risk factor, which manifests soon after birth, can help prevent onset of disease by modifying lifestyle.
“When we compared the gene sequence of the two groups of people, it became clear that those who have the disease were having a variant, like a mutation, like one nucleotide, which are building blocks of gene sequences, changed to another nucleotide,” said professor Nitish Mahapatra, department of biotechnology, IIT-M.
A further study to find a link between the variant and an individual’s susceptibility to diseases found that those with the disease carried pancreastatin peptide with amino acid changed from glycine to serine due to the mutation.
Pancreastatin is a peptide that interacts with receptors of insulin and regulates metabolism.
“The function of serine is much different from glycine, i.e., the peptide is more active when the serine variant is present,” professor Mahapatra said. “For a normal body function, we do not need such a super active version of peptide. It actually causes metabolic disorder,” the professor added.
The results of the study have been published online in the peer-reviewed Diabetes, the flagship journal of the American Diabetes Association.
