Najlaa Filimban, Safaa Qusti, Nadia Ghannam, Nehad Shaer, Mohammed Y. Sakka, Amani Al-Mars, Fatma Gazzaz, Ashraf Dallol, Adel Abuzenadh

Abstract

Background: Several FTO variants have been known to be associated with obesity and typ2 diabetes. Since these variants have been identified in genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in white Europeans, they attracted wide attention for being known to enhance the risk of obesity in different populations. FTO rs9930506 polymorphism was recognized in previous studies as genetic candidate leading to increase obesity measure. Yet it is believed ethnicity variation may cause the differences in response to environment signal. Objective: The aim of this study is to estimate the genotype and allele frequency in diabetic and healthy individuals in the western region of Saudi Arabia and then investigate the relation of single nucleotide polymorphism to BMI, gender and age in diabetic case compared to control. Genotyping of rs9930506 was performed using TaqMan® OpenArray® Real-Time PCR . Results: Observation has showed allele A frequency of SNP rs9930506 was 54.9% and 98.3% for DM and healthy control samples respectively. However, alleleG frequency was detected in DM and control subjects as 45.14 % and 1.7% respectively. Evidence indicates that the frequency of allele G is higher in DM case compared to healthy individuals. Also, a strong significant association between FTO SNP rs9930506 and T2DM was reported (P=0.000, U.C. =0.631). Data have shown associations between T2D and BMI, gender and age (P=0.00) suggesting that obese individuals with T2D have a higher frequency 11.138 times compared to obese in healthy control. Additionally, our finding highlighted the impact of the genotype AA of rs9930506 on DM group and determined with a remarkable effect in particular of being obese and male aged from 32 to 53 (P=0.011, OR=56.5). Conclusion: All together, this study is considered as an initiative to point out to the association of FTO rs9930506 to obesity and T2DM via BMI trait in the most diverse region (western)in Saudi Arabia. This study suggested that male obese are the most affected individuals indicating that FTO SNP exerts different role based on gender and age. Knowing the genetic personal variations will assist in creating strategies to control theses metabolic diseases.