The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) is organizing a three-day international symposium on "Dissecting the Role of Genes and Environment in Complex Diseases" from December 6 to 8 in Hyderabad.

The symposium would cover topics such as Epidemiology of complex diseases with special stress on diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases, Genetic variation in the Indian subcontinent, Comparison of disease conditions between Indians and Europeans, Effect of rural-urban migration on disease prevalence, Interaction between genes and the environment, Evolution of complex diseases, Developmental origins of adult diseases, Epigenetics and Statistics/software in human genetic analysis, the statement added.

Pioneers working in the areas of epidemiology, molecular genetics and epigenetics of complex diseases from India, Europe and USA are participating in the scientific sessions. The symposium will discuss the current status and trends to provide future directions to the above areas of research relevant to complex genetic diseases, a scourge to mankind. Dr G R Chandak, Dr C S Yajnik, Pune and Dr A T Hattersley, UK are the conveners of the symposium.

Recent genome-wide association studies have identified a number of genes to be associated with complex diseases such as diabetes mellitus, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, etc. However, the role of genetic variants and interaction with the environment in predicting susceptibility to the disease development is not understood. This is especially important in view of the fact that the largest number of diabetes patients in the world lives not in Europe or the USA, but in India.

Every disease has a genetic basis and genetic susceptibility to complex disorders is variable across different populations. Asian Indians are known to be at an increased risk of diabetes mellitus and coronary heart diseases probably due to the "Thin-Fat phenotype," which predicts higher insulin resistance compared to the Europeans. Sedentary life-style and change in food habits have added to the recent spurt of these diseases in them.

Moreover, one of the major research activities of CCMB is to understand the genetic variation in the Indian subcontinent and in dissecting the role of genes and environment in susceptibility to complex diseases such as chronic pancreatitis, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular diseases etc. Tremendous genetic diversity and a variable phenotype in the Indian population provides a unique opportunity to understand the genetic variations in the Indian subcontinent, dissect the role of genes and environment in the manifestation of complex diseases for developing personalized medicine.