Type 2 diabetes and FTO rs9939609 gene polymorphism: a study among the two tribal population groups of Manipur, North East India

Diabetes is one of the most underrated epidemic worldwide, and its prevalence has increased rapidly in developing nations like India. It has increased not only in the general population per se, but even among the indigenous tribal populations also. Several candidate genes have been associated with type 2 diabetes, and the association of type 2 diabetes and FTO rs9939609 gene polymorphism is a matter of debate. The present study aims to understand the prevalence of type-2 diabetes and its association with FTO rs9939609 gene polymorphism, among the Naga and Mizo tribe of Manipur, North East India. Demographic, somatometric variables and blood samples from 521 individuals were collected and FTO rs9939609 variant was screened. The prevalence of type 2 diabetes/impaired fasting glucose was found to be 10.1 and 43.73% among the Liangmai and Mizo tribe, respectively. The FTO variant showed an increased risk for impaired fasting glucose (OR 1.25; CI 0.38–4.1) among the Liangmai tribe, but among Mizo tribe, it showed an increased risk for type 2 diabetes (OR 1.34; CI 0.73–2.4), albeit with no statistical significances. This suggests that there seems to be diverse effect of FTO rs9939609 A allele in the two tribes, i.e., disadvantageous effect among Liangmai tribe and an adaptive effect among Mizo tribe.