PHILADELPHIA—A gene linked to the development of type 2 diabetes in adults also raises the risk of being overweight during childhood, according to a new study from researchers from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. The finding reveals the genetic origins of diabetes and may provide a path for developing drugs to counteract the disease.
Researchers investigated 20 gene variants known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), previously reported to be associated with type 2 diabetes. The researchers drew on a cohort of nearly 7,200 Caucasian children, aged 2 to 18 years, in an ongoing genome-wide association study of childhood obesity at Children’s Hospital. Dividing the cohort randomly in half allowed the team to follow their discovery study with a replication study.
The study, published Nov. 23 in the online version of the journal Diabetes, found that the gene HHEX-IDE does not affect birth weight, but makes it more likely that a child will become obese during childhood. The gene does not appear to predispose to obesity in adults, although by contributing to childhood obesity, it may set the stage for type 2 diabetes in adulthood.
Researchers cautioned that HHEX-IDE accounts for only a small proportion of the genetic contribution to the risk of type 2 diabetes, so many other gene variants remain to be discovered. They said HHEX-IDE may represent an important underpinning of the disease.
“Previously we thought that this gene affects insulin production during adulthood, but we now see that it may play an early role in influencing insulin resistance through its impact on body size during childhood,” the wrote. “One implication is that if we can develop medicines to target specific biological pathways in childhood, we may be able to prevent diabetes from developing later in life.”
