PLoS medicine
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Observational Study
Integrating polygenic risk scores in the prediction of type 2 diabetes risk and subtypes in British Pakistanis and Bangladeshis: A population-based cohort study.
Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is highly prevalent in British South Asians, yet they are underrepresented in research. Genes & Health (G&H) is a large, population study of British Pakistanis and Bangladeshis (BPB) comprising genomic and routine health data. We assessed the extent to which genetic risk for T2D is shared between BPB and European populations (EUR). We then investigated whether the integration of a polygenic risk score (PRS) for T2D with an existing risk tool (QDiabetes) could improve prediction of incident disease and the characterisation of disease subtypes. ⋯ Our analysis of the transferability of T2D loci between EUR and BPB indicates the need for larger, multiancestry studies to better characterise the genetic contribution to disease and its varied aetiology. We show that a T2D PRS optimised for this high-risk BPB population has potential clinical application in BPB, improving the identification of T2D risk (especially in the young) on top of an established clinical risk algorithm and aiding identification of subgroups at diagnosis, which may help future efforts to stratify care and treatment of the disease.
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[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1003815.].
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Jason Bantjes discusses the accompanying study by Michelle Torok, Jin Han, and colleagues investigating the effects of a self-guided smartphone application on suicidal ideation among young adults.