LADAA Study of the Genetic Causes of Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults

A case-control study approach will be used to compare the allelic frequencies of Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) markers of the cases (i.e., LADA patients) to a randomly selected control samples that does not have the trait under study. To study the role of genetic factors in LADA, the study seeks to determine if certain genomic regions that are captured or mirrored by selective Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that are genotyped, are over or underrepresented in those with the disease compared to those who do not. The level of auto-antibodies is the serum can also be studied as a quantitative trait where we ask the question if there is correlation with specific SNP alleles that are genotyped. The markers that are found to be over or under-represented in the study cases will then be tested in an independent set of patients also recruited in this study. This allows us to filter markers that show significance simply by chance and prevents us from being misled.