title: Vitamin D receptor initiation codon polymorphism influences genetic susceptibility to type 1 diabetes mellitus in the Japanese population.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Vitamin D has been shown to exert manifold immunomodulatory effects. Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) is regarded to be immune-mediated and vitamin D prevents the development of diabetes in the NOD mouse. We studied the association between T1DM and the initiation codon polymorphism in exon 2 of the vitamin D receptor gene in a Japanese population. We also investigated associations between the vitamin D receptor polymorphism and GAD65-antibody (Ab) positivity. We carried out polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis in 110 Japanese T1DM patients and 250 control subjects. GAD65 antibodies were assessed in 78 patients with T1DM.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We found a significantly higher prevalence of the F allele / the FF genotype in the patients compared to the controls (P = 0.0069 and P = 0.014, respectively). Genotype and allele frequencies differed significantly between GAD65-Ab-positive patients and controls (P = 0.017 and P = 0.012, respectively), but neither between GAD65-Ab-negative patients and controls (P = 0.68 and P = 0.66, respectively) nor between GAD65-Ab-positive and -negative patients (P = 0.19 and P = 0.16, respectively).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our findings suggest that the vitamin D receptor initiation codon polymorphism influences genetic susceptibility to T1DM among the Japanese. This polymorphism is also associated with GAD65-Ab-positive T1DM, although the absence of a significant difference between GAD65-Ab-negative patients and controls might be simply due to the small sample size of patients tested for GAD65 antibodies.
authors.affiliation: Third Department of Internal Medicine, Showa University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan. yshyban@aol.com
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ban
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Taniyama
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Yanagawa
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yamada
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Maruyama
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kasuga
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ban