Replication of Type 2 diabetes-associated variants in a Saudi Arabian population

Over 120 Type 2 diabetes (T2D) loci have been identified from genome-wide association studies (GWAS), mainly from Caucasian populations. Very limited knowledge is available on the Saudi Arabian population. In this study, 122 previously reported T2D-related variants from 84 loci were examined in a Saudi Arabian cohort of 1,578 individuals (659 T2D cases and 919 controls). Eleven single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) corresponding to nine independent loci had a P value <0.05. If a more stringent Bonferroni threshold of P = 4.1 × 10−4 ( = 0.05/122) were applied, none of the SNPs would have reached the significance level. Nine of the SNPs with a P value <0.05 showed similar odds ratios as previously described, but rs11605924 (CRY2) and rs9470794 (ZFAND3) were in the opposite direction. This study demonstrates the importance of large-scale GWAS in the Saudi Arabian population to identify ethnicity-specific disease-associated variants.