Assessing the Causal Association of Glycine with Risk of Cardio-metabolic Diseases

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2019 Mar 7

PMID 30837465

Citations 64

Authors

Laura B L Wittemans

Luca A Lotta

Clare Oliver-Williams

Isobel D Stewart

Praveen Surendran

Savita Karthikeyan

Felix R Day

Albert Koulman

Fumiaki Imamura

Lingyao Zeng

Jeanette Erdmann

Heribert Schunkert

Kay-Tee Khaw

Julian L Griffin

Nita G Forouhi

Robert A Scott

Angela M Wood

Stephen Burgess

Joanna M M Howson

John Danesh

Nicholas J Wareham

Adam S Butterworth

Claudia Langenberg

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Circulating levels of glycine have previously been associated with lower incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD) and type 2 diabetes (T2D) but it remains uncertain if glycine plays an aetiological role. We present a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for glycine in 80,003 participants and investigate the causality and potential mechanisms of the association between glycine and cardio-metabolic diseases using genetic approaches. We identify 27 genetic loci, of which 22 have not previously been reported for glycine. We show that glycine is genetically associated with lower CHD risk and find that this may be partly driven by blood pressure. Evidence for a genetic association of glycine with T2D is weaker, but we find a strong inverse genetic effect of hyperinsulinaemia on glycine. Our findings strengthen evidence for a protective effect of glycine on CHD and show that the glycine-T2D association may be driven by a glycine-lowering effect of insulin resistance.

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