Need of Countrywide Genetic Risk Scores (GRS) or Polygenic Scores (PGS) for Type-2 Diabetes Mellitus

Abstract

The recent surge in the cases of type-2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) needs to be intervened with short and long-term guards and much needful preemptive explorative efforts. Unfortunately, the existing efforts still fall short. As per WHO data, Pakistan has climbed up the world diabetes ranking with a prevalence close to 15%. The factual position may be even worse due to the lack of undiagnosed cases in the poverty-stricken country with limited resources.1,2 This will burden not just diabetes therapeutics, but additional workload in ophthalmology for retinopathy, cardiac centres for atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases, neurology for neuropathies and nephrology for early-onset chronic kidney diseases. While resource bound in every possible way, human productivity will be at a loss and money will be wasted if preventive strategies will not be evolved and implemented with full-thrust. Though primary preventions stand as the key intervention, still lessons can be learnt from the various evolving concepts by doing risk profiling especially the genetic risk scores (GRS) which can highlight the prevailing genetic predispositions among our much-varied racial population. 3