Evidence for sex-specific associations between variation in acid phosphatase locus 1 (ACP1) and insulin sensitivity in Mexican-Americans.

BACKGROUND

Acid phosphatase locus 1 (ACP1) is a low molecular weight tyrosine phosphatase that has been shown to be an important regulator of insulin receptor signaling.

OBJECTIVE

We tested whether variation in ACP1 is associated with type 2 diabetes-related traits in 1035 individuals in 339 Mexican-American families of probands with or without a previous diagnosis of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM).

METHODS

Study participants were phenotyped by oral glucose tolerance test (for glucose and insulin level) and iv glucose tolerance test (for insulin sensitivity and acute insulin response) and had dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry scans to assess body composition. Six tag single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were identified from among 15 SNPs genotyped across the ACP1 region. SNPs were tested for association with phenotypes using a likelihood ratio test under a variance components framework.

RESULTS

After Bonferroni correction, none of the SNPs were associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus-related phenotypes. However, we observed a significant sex-specific effect of rs3828329. Among males, rs3828329 was significantly associated with fasting insulin (Bonferroni P = 0.007) and insulin sensitivity (Bonferroni P = 0.019) and marginally associated with 2-h insulin (Bonferroni P = 0.058) and percentage body fat (Bonferroni P = 0.09).

CONCLUSIONS

There were no significant associations in females. We conclude that variation in ACP1 is associated with fasting insulin and insulin sensitivity in a sex-specific manner.