Bivariate genome-wide scan for metabolic phenotypes in non-diabetic Chinese individuals from the Stanford, Asia and Pacific Program of Hypertension and Insulin Resistance Family Study

Aims/hypothesis Hypertension, obesity, impaired glucose tolerance and dyslipidaemia are metabolic abnormalities that often cluster together more often than expected by chance alone. Since these metabolic variables are highly heritable and are at least partially genetically determined, the clustering of defects in these traits implies that pleiotropic effects, where a common set of genes influences more than one trait simultaneously, are likely.