East Asian GWAS reveals shared and distinct diabetes pathways

In a study of 596,778 individuals of East Asian ancestry, researchers evaluated the genetic architecture of type 2 diabetes and compared it directly to a European cohort of comparable size. The genome-wide association study identified 196 loci, including three previously unreported loci.

Subsequent multi-ancestry fine-mapping resolved 521 independent causal signals with high precision. The researchers found that 74% of these signals are shared across ancestries, while the remainder are strictly ancestry-specific. Beyond this shared genetic structure, the team observed population differences in regulatory and pathway-level contributions, particularly involving pancreatic regulation and lipid- or adipose-related pathways. Finally, a polygenic risk score constructed from cross-ancestry meta-analysis yielded the most robust predictive performance, achieving an area under the curve of 0.788.