Is malaria to blame for diabetes?

Could malaria and evolution be to blame for a predisposition to diabetes and gout in Pacific peoples?

That’s the question that will be tested over the next three years by a team of researchers at the University of Otago.

Dr Anna Gosling hopes the work will help break down stigma about metabolic diseases that can prevent some Pasifika people from visiting the doctor.

‘‘This project has potential to change the erroneous and stigma-producing perspective that modern metabolic disease is purely caused by a modern lifestyle.’’

The researcher said the multidisciplinary team aimed to understand how there could have been historical benefits of genetic variants that now cause disease. That could provide insight into the prevalence of metabolic disease in Pacific populations.

Social stigma often meant many Pasifika people didn’t go to the doctor for diabetes and gout, but hyperuricaemia was ‘‘relatively easily treatable’’.

Diet and lifestyle could still be a factor in the causes of type-2 diabetes and gout, but Gosling said it appeared to be ‘‘a lot more complex than what we previously thought’’.

The team, headed by professors Tony Merriman, Lisa Matisoo-Smith and Gosling, have been awarded one of two inaugural Marsden Fund Council awards to test the hypothesis.

The $3 million prize will be spent over three years.

Merriman said the aim of the project was to investigate genetic markers associated with metabolic diseases such as diabetes and gout in Pacific people.

‘‘A central hypothesis is that the high rate of metabolic disease evolved through genetic selection by infectious disease, in particular malaria.

‘‘The hyperuricaemic phenotype, a common factor in metabolic disease, may have evolved in Pacific ancestors as a protection against malaria.’’

A hyperuricaemic phenotype meant a high level of uric acid in the blood that had resulted from the interaction of a person’s genes with their environment. In this case, it meant the way Pacific people’s ancestors’ genes had responded to diseases like malaria through natural selection.

Matisoo-Smith said the presence of skeletal evidence of metabolic disease found in ancient burials across the Pacific indicated gout and diabetes were not solely the result of a ‘‘Westernised’’ diet and lifestyle, as was ‘‘often assumed’’.