Genetic risk, adherence to a healthy lifestyle, and type 2 diabetes risk among 550,000 Chinese adults: results from 2 independent Asian cohorts.

Background: Whether genetic susceptibility to type 2 diabetes is modified by a healthy lifestyle among Chinese remains unknown.

Objectives: The aim of the study was to determine whether genetic risk and adherence to a healthy lifestyle contribute independently to the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Methods: We defined a lifestyle score using BMI, alcohol intake, smoking, physical activities, and diets in 461,030 participants from the China Kadoorie Biobank and 38,434 participants from the Singapore Chinese Health Study. A genetic risk score was constructed based on type 2 diabetes loci among 100,175 and 16,172 participants in each cohort, respectively. A Cox proportional-hazards model was used to estimate the interaction between genetic and lifestyle factors on the risk of type 2 diabetes.

Results: In 2 independent Asian cohorts, we consistently found a healthy lifestyle (the bottom quintile of lifestyle score) was associated with a substantially lower risk of type 2 diabetes than an unhealthy lifestyle (the top quintile of lifestyle score) regardless of genetic risk. In those at a high genetic risk, the risk of type 2 diabetes was 57% lower among participants with a healthy lifestyle than among those with an unhealthy lifestyle in the pooled cohorts. Among participants at high genetic risk, the standardized 10-y incidence of type 2 diabetes was 7.11% in those with an unhealthy lifestyle vs. 2.45% in those with a healthy lifestyle.

Conclusions: In 2 independent cohorts involving 558,302 Chinese participants, we did not observe an interaction between genetics and lifestyle with type 2 diabetes risk, but our findings provide replicable evidence to show lifestyle factors and genetic factors were independently associated with the risk of type 2 diabetes. Within any genetic risk category, a healthy lifestyle was associated with a significantly lower risk of type 2 diabetes among the Chinese population.