NEWS & VIEWS

Introduction:

Diabetes is the most common endocrine disorder that affects 366 million people worldwide. The International Diabetes Federation (IDF) predicts that the total number of people living with diabetes will increase up to 552 million within twenty years [1]. Diabetes, mostly type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), now affects 5.9% of the world’s adult population with almost 80% of patients coming from developing countries [2].

The prevalence of T2DM presents a wide spectrum in different ethnic groups. As an example of an estimate by the IDF, show 1.1% of the population in Myanmar to 30% in the Nauru population are susceptible [3].

More than 2.03 million of Malaysians have diabetes mellitus and IDF predicts that this number will increase up to 3.3 million by 2030 [1]. There is strong evidence that predisposition to T2DM is a genetic disease and the genetic causes could be different between populations. Among the SNPs of PAI-1 gene, the 4G/5G polymorphism that located in the promoter region −675 bp upstream from the mRNA synthesis initiation point has been studied. Alu-repeat I/D polymorphism was found in intron 8 of the tPA gene [4], and a number of populations have been found to be dimorphic for its presence or absence of repeats [5]. Our previous studies showed that, the PAI-1 4G/5G polymorphism was associated with metabolic syndrome