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Thr394Thr polymorphism (rs2970847) of PPARGC1A gene and obesity in Asian Indians

International Journal of Obesity volume 31, pages 562–563 (2007)Cite this article

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma co-activator-1 (PPARGC1 or PGC1) is one of the genes of current research interest among diabetes and obesity researchers because of its recently described role in orchestrated change of oxidative phosphorylation pathway gene expression.1 In a recently published article in the International Journal of Obesity, Vimaleswaran et al.2 presented the association of a synonymous Thr394Thr (G to A) polymorphism in PPARGC1 gene with increased total, visceral and subcutaneous body fat in a cohort of 82 randomly selected diabetic and 82 control individuals of Asian Indian (Southern India) ethnicity. In this Letter to the Editor, I would like to draw the attention to the readers about major analytical and interpretational errors in this article.

Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) test is commonly used for quality control of genotyping and is one of the few ways to identify systematic genotyping errors.3 Vimaleswaran et al.2 used χ2 goodness-of-fit test and concluded in their work that each of the three marker loci was in HWE among both cases (type 2 diabetes, T2DM) and controls (normal glucose tolerant, NGT) separately. Surprisingly, reanalysis of the HWE by the same method using the genotype data provided by the author in Table 1 of their article indicates significant (P<0.05) departure from HWE for Thr394Thr (HWE P-value=0.0002) and Gly482Ser (HWE P-value=0.0037) genotypes in cases and +A2962G genotype in both controls (HWE P-value=0.006) and cases (HWE P-value=0.0003). Reanalysis by other methods including likelihood-ratio test statistic and exact test (by using FINETTI; http://ihg.gsf.de/cgi-bin/hw/hwa1.pl) also indicates the absence of HWE.

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  1. Department of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, College of Medicine, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR, USA

    S K Das

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Das, S. Thr394Thr polymorphism (rs2970847) of PPARGC1A gene and obesity in Asian Indians. Int J Obes 31, 562–563 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ijo.0803461

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