"A genome-wide association study identifies novel risk loci for type 2 diabetes," by Robert Sladek and 21
others, Nature, 445(7130): 881-5, 22 February 2007.

[Authors' affiliations: 14 Canadian, French, and UK institutions]

Abstract: "Type 2 diabetes mellitus results from the interaction of environmental factors with a combination of genetic variants, most of which were hitherto unknown. A systematic search for these variants was recently made possible by the development of high-density arrays that permit the genotyping of hundreds of thousands of polymorphisms. We tested 392,935 single-nucleotide polymorphisms in a French case-control cohort. Markers with the most significant difference in genotype frequencies between cases of type 2 diabetes and controls were fast-tracked for testing in a second cohort. This identified four loci containing variants that confer type 2 diabetes risk, in addition to confirming the known association with the TCF7L2 gene. These loci include a non-synonymous polymorphism in the zinc transporter SLC30A8, which is expressed exclusively in insulin-producing beta-cells, and two linkage disequilibrium blocks that contain genes potentially involved in beta-cell development or function (IDE - KIF11 - HHEX and EXT2 - ALX4). These associations explain a substantial portion of disease risk and constitute proof of principle for the genome-wide approach to the elucidation of complex genetic traits."

This 2007 report from Nature was cited 62 times in current journal articles indexed by Thomson Reuters during March-April 2008. During that two-month period, only one other paper published in the last two years and categorized as clinical medicine (aside from reviews) collected a higher number of citations. Prior to the most
recent bimonthly count, citations to the paper have accrued as follows:

January-February 2008: 26 citations
November-December 2007: 41
September-October 2007: 39
July-August 2007: 8
May-June 2007: 11
March-April 2007: 2
January-February 2007: 1

Total citations to date: 190

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