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AIMS/HYPOTHESIS: Stearoyl-CoA desaturase (SCD) is emerging as a key regulator of lipid and carbohydrate metabolism. Scd-null mice display a beneficial metabolic phenotype characterised by resistance to obesity, diabetes and hyperlipidaemia. The human homologue, SCD, maps to a region of chromosome 10 linked to type 2 diabetes, and SCD activity correlates with insulin sensitivity. Given this strong positional and biological candidacy, the present study sought to establish whether sequence variation in SCD influences susceptibility to type 2 diabetes and related traits. METHODS: The SCD gene was resequenced in 23 diabetic subjects. Six variants within coding and adjacent sequence, including a non-synonymous SNP in exon 5 (M224L), were selected for genotyping in a primary set of 608 diabetic subjects and 600 control subjects. RESULTS: There was no association (at the allele, genotype or haplotype level) with type 2 diabetes, although genotype frequencies at the +14301 A>C SNP in the 3' untranslated region showed borderline association (p~0.06) when evidence for linkage was taken into account. However, replication studies (350 young-onset diabetic patients; 747 controls) failed to confirm any relationship with diabetes for this variant. No significant associations were seen for diabetes-related traits including BMI and waist-to-hip ratio. CONCLUSIONS/INTERPRETATION: The present study, the first reported analysis of this gene, indicates that the SCD variants typed do not explain chromosome-10-encoded susceptibility to type 2 diabetes. Although this study provided no evidence that SCD sequence variation influences diabetes susceptibility or related traits, SCD remains a major target for pharmaceutical and/or environmental manipulation.

Original publication

DOI

10.1007/s00125-004-1575-4

Type

Journal article

Journal

Diabetologia

Publication Date

12/2004

Volume

47

Pages

2168 - 2175

Keywords

Adult, Carbohydrate Metabolism, Carbohydrates, Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2, Exons, Female, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Genetic Variation, Humans, Introns, Lipid Metabolism, Male, Middle Aged, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Reference Values, Stearoyl-CoA Desaturase