Gene variant in Māori, Pacific Islanders, linked to taller height

About a third of Māori and Pacific Islanders carry a gene variant that's just been linked to taller height. Photo / 123RF

About a third of Māori and Pacific Islanders carry a gene variant that's just been linked to taller height.

A national team of scientists today revealed their latest insights into the gene CREBRF, which is found in no other ancestry groups in the world.

Previous findings have linked the same gene with a higher body mass index (BMI) – a key measure of obesity – and paradoxically, a lower risk of type 2 diabetes.

The new discovery, just published in the International Journal of Obesity, showed the variant was associated with an average height increase of 1.25cm for each copy of the gene a person had.

"One point two five centimetres might not sound a lot, but this is the biggest effect on height of any gene variant identified to date anywhere in the world," said lead author Associate Professor Rinki Murphy, of the University of Auckland and Maurice Wilkins Centre for Molecular Bio-discovery.

"It highlights how differences in our genes can have an impact on our body shape and structure."

The study, initially funded by the Health Research Council, was part of a long-running collaboration between Otago University and East Coast primary health organisation Ngāti Porou Hauora.

Study co-author Professor Tony Merriman recently shared the findings with communities in the East Coast.

"This finding demonstrates how knowledge about a genetic variant can help us to understand why some people of Māori and Pacific ancestry are healthy whilst also having a larger body size," Merriman said.

"Better understanding of such functions of genes like the CREBRF also adds evidential support to increasingly prevalent observations that body mass index may not accurately predict an individual's risk of developing type 2 diabetes."

Ngāti Porou Hauora's deputy chair, Huti Puketapu-Watson, said the research was helping to "de-stigmatise" obesity and type 2 diabetes - conditions in which genetics played an important role.

"It empowers us, and helps to break the 'one size fits all' models underpinning health systems - for example, assumptions that interventions informed by research with populations of European ancestry will work well for Māori and Pacific peoples."

The research programme was now being expanded to include other Māori and Pacific groups around the country, and further studies were exploring potential links between gene variants and chronic conditions like gout, heart and kidney disease.