Common Variants in the Adiponectin Gene (ADIPOQ) Associated With Plasma Adiponectin Levels, Type 2 Diabetes, and Diabetes-Related Quantitative Traits

Common Variants in the Adiponectin Gene ( ADIPOQ ) Associated With Plasma Adiponectin Levels, Type 2 Diabetes, and Diabetes-Related Quantitative Traits The Framingham Offspring Study Marie-France Hivert 1 2 , Alisa K. Manning 3 , Jarred B. McAteer 4 5 , Jose C. Florez 2 4 5 , Josée Dupuis 3 , Caroline S. Fox 6 7 , Christopher J. O'Donnell 2 7 , L. Adrienne Cupples 3 and James B. Meigs 1 2 1 General Medicine Division, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 2 Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 3 Department of Biostatistics, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts 4 Center for Human Genetic Research and Diabetes Unit, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 5 Program in Medical and Population Genetics, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts 6 Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Hypertension, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 7 Framingham Heart Study, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Framingham, Massachusetts Corresponding author: James B. Meigs, jmeigs{at}partners.org Abstract OBJECTIVE— Variants in ADIPOQ have been inconsistently associated with adiponectin levels or diabetes. Using comprehensive linkage disequilibrium mapping, we genotyped single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in ADIPOQ to evaluate the association of common variants with adiponectin levels and risk of diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS— Participants in the Framingham Offspring Study ( n = 2,543, 53% women) were measured for glycemic phenotypes and incident diabetes over 28 years of follow-up; adiponectin levels were quantified at exam 7. We genotyped 22 tag SNPs that captured common (minor allele frequency >0.05) variation at r 2 > 0.8 across ADIPOQ plus 20 kb 5′ and 10 kb 3′ of the gene. We used linear mixed effects models to test additive associations of each SNP with adiponectin levels and glycemic phenotypes. Hazard ratios (HRs) for incident diabetes were estimated using an adjusted Cox proportional hazards model. RESULTS— Two promoter SNPs in strong linkage disequilibrium with each other ( r 2 = 0.80) were associated with adiponectin levels (rs17300539; P nominal [ P n ] = 2.6 × 10 −8 ; P empiric [ P e ] = 0.0005 and rs822387; P n = 3.8 × 10 −5 ; P e = 0.001). A 3′-untranslated region (3′UTR) SNP (rs6773957) was associated with adiponectin levels ( P n = 4.4 × 10 −4 ; P e = 0.005). A nonsynony