Katalin Sümegi, BelaI. Melegh, Anita Maasz, Peter Kisfali, Judit Bene and Bela Melegh
Type 2 diabetes mellitus represents a significant global health problem contributing to a considerably increased atherosclerotic burden and cardio- and cerebrovascular risk. Type 2 diabetes mellitus has high incidence and prevalence affecting both genders at any time of life worldwide. Presence of diabetes related phenotypes may represent risk for other metabolic diseases, cardio-, and cerebrovascular disorders, as well. The etiology of type 2 diabetes mellitus is complex; several environmental-, and genetic factors have been identified, which can contribute to the pathogenesis of the disease. Nowadays, numerous genetic loci have been shown to associate with type 2 diabetes mellitus and other diabetic traits, and the number of the identified susceptibility variants is expected to still grow due to rapidly developing field of candidate gene -, linkage-, and genome-wide association studies. The identified genetic variants can affect various metabolic pathways like glucose-, and lipid metabolism, signal transduction and can have effects on transcriptional- and translational levels. Among these, lipid alterations especially increased levels of triglycerides have been found to correlate to various disease phenotypes. It is also well known, that genetic variants identified in triglyceride metabolism are often shared as presence of these SNPs can confer risk for various disorders equally representing a susceptibility link between disorders. The scope of the current review is to summarize shared susceptibility variants, which have effect on the circulating lipid levels and represent risk for type 2 diabetes mellitus.
