We blog frequently about the risk factors for diabetes, and if you've noticed, they are wide and varied. From food consumption, environmental atmosphere, and family history, anything and everything it seems can be a risk factor for developing diabetes.
New research from an international team of doctors provides one of the most interesting explanations for the prevalence of diabetes in the Latino community. If you're thinking it has to do with your family tree, you'd be correct. But you'd have to go back thousands of generations to find the cause.
Harvard geneticist David Altshuler and colleagues found hints that humans got the diabetes gene mutation from Neanderthals, our ancient cousins who went extinct more than 30,000 years ago.
"As far as I know, this is the first time a version of a gene from Neanderthal has been connected to a modern-day disease," Altshuler told Shots. The findings were published in the journal Nature.
Several years ago geneticists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany caused a stir in the scientific community when they were able to sequence the genome of a Neanderthal from a fossil. In that genetic code were patterns that matched those in human DNA. The data they found suggested that humans were more than a little friendly with their Neanderthal cousins.
"Now it's well accepted that humans interbred with Neanderthals," Altshuler said. In our genome, most humans carry at least 2% of Neanderthal DNA. So therefore, it shouldn't be surprising to us that some of our traits and health comes from that 2%.
Altshuler is quick to point out that Neanderthals didn't necessarily have diabetes. "It just happens that this disease sequence came from them," he said.
Altshuler and his research team analyzed DNA from over 8,000 residents of Mexico and people who have lived in Latin America, in order to identify the genes that contribute to the Latino community having a higher risk of diabetes. Most of the participants had a mix of European and Native American ancestry.
The team found genes already identified as having an effect on diabetes, including insulin production. However, they found a new one that's involved with fat metabolism.
Mutations in this particular gene increase a person's risk of getting type 2 diabetes by at least 20%, said Altshuler. If the person is unlucky enough to have two copies of the mutation, their risk rises to 40%. For Mexican Americans, the risk jumps from 13% to 19% if they have two copies of the mutation. For other Americans, the risk goes from 8% to 11%.
"This is a genetic factor that has a modest affect on the risk of getting the disease. Not everybody that has it will have the disease," Altshuler said. "But the genes are very common in Latinos and Asians."
Roughly half of Latinos carry the mutation, while 20% of Asians have it. Contrasted to European Americans, just 2% have the mutation. So this new genetic data will hopefully explain the difference in Type 2 prevalence in Latinos versus European Americans.
"The findings are important because they give us a new biological clue about a gene involved in diabetes, which could lead to more treatments," Altshuler said. "The Neanderthal connection is interesting, but it's not the essence of the work."
Reference: NPR
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