The gene, known as Patatin-like phospholipase domain containing 3 or PNPLA3, is more common in Hispanics in comparison to Caucasians and African-Americans thus leading to increased instances of Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the former.
Lead researcher Helen H. Hobbs, at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, looked for genetic variations in more than 2,000 participants in the Dallas Heart Study.
The team found more than 12,000 gene variants and found only one gene PNPLA3 was linked to liver fat. The gene explains 72 percent of the ancestry-related differences in liver fat and also linked to liver inflammation -- possibly the next step on the way to serious disease.
Fatty livers occur in 33 percent of European-Americans, 45 percent of Hispanic-Americans, and 24 percent of African-Americans. The next step is to investigate how the various forms of the PNPLA3 gene affect lipid metabolism, the scientists say. The article can be found online in Nature Genetics.
