A Genome-Wide Association Study Confirms Previously Reported Loci for Type 2 Diabetes in Han Chinese

BACKGROUND: Genome-wide association study (GWAS) has identified more than 30 loci associated with type 2 diabetes (T2D) in Caucasians. However, genomic understanding of T2D in Asians, especially Han Chinese, is still limited. METHODS AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A two-stage GWAS was performed in Han Chinese from Mainland China. The discovery stage included 793 T2D cases and 806 healthy controls genotyped using Illumina Human 660- and 610-Quad BeadChips; and the replication stage included two independent case-control populations (a total of 4445 T2D cases and 4458 controls) genotyped using TaqMan assay. We validated the associations of KCNQ1 (rs163182, p = 2.085×10(−17), OR 1.28) and C2CD4A/B (rs1370176, p = 3.677×10(−4), OR 1.124; rs1436953, p = 7.753×10(−6), OR 1.141; rs7172432, p = 4.001×10(−5), OR 1.134) in Han Chinese. CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE: Our study represents the first GWAS of T2D with both discovery and replication sample sets recruited from Han Chinese men and women residing in Mainland China. We confirmed the associations of KCNQ1 and C2CD4A/B with T2D, with the latter for the first time being examined in Han Chinese. Arguably, eight more independent loci were replicated in our GWAS.