Vitamin D Receptor Genetic Polymorphism Is Significantly Associated with Risk of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Chinese Han Population

Abstract

We investigated the effect of vitamin D receptor (VDR) gene polymorphism on the risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in a Chinese Han population. Three tagSNPs (rs11574129, rs2228570 and rs739837) were genotyped using TaqMan assays in a case-control study including 669 cases with T2DM, 1084 individuals with impaired fasting glucose (IFG) and 1,961 controls with normal fasting glucose. Multiple logistic regression was applied to analyze the association of SNPs and the risk of diabetes by adjusting for covariates including age, sex, body mass index (BMI) and smoking. General linear model (GLM) was applied to compare fasting blood glucose levels between genotypes and adjusted for confounding factors. The results showed that rs739837 was significantly associated with increased risk of T2DM in additive model (OR = 1.166, 95% CI 1.017-1.337, p = 0.028) and dominant (OR = 1.166, 95% CI 1.017-1.337, p = 0.002) model. Stratified analysis showed that rs739837 and rs2228570 were, respectively, correlated with T2DM in females and males. Significant associations were found between three SNPs and T2DM in the population <55 years of age. SNPs (rs739837, rs11574129) showed significant associations with T2DM in the smoking population. Quantitative trait analysis indicated that the CC group of rs2228570 has lower fasting glucose than TT/TC genotype group in controls. This study provides further evidence that rs739837 in the VDR gene is associated with increased risk of T2DM in a Chinese Han population.