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Reply to: Milk intake, lactase non-persistence and type 2 diabetes risk in Chinese adults

Nature Metabolism volume 6, pages 2057–2059 (2024)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 18 September 2024

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replying to M. G. Kakkoura et al. Nature Metabolism https://doi.org/10.1038/s42255-024-01128-2 (2024)

We thank Kakkoura and colleagues1 for their commentary on our recent study, which reported an inverse association between milk intake and incident type 2 diabetes (T2D) in lactase non-persistent (LNP) individuals with a potential mediating role of gut microbiota and related metabolites2.

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Fig. 1: Adjustment for adiposity measures in the associations of milk-associated metabolites and gut bacterial species with incident T2D.

Data availability

The data in our original article2 were used to generate results in this paper. In brief, the genetics data of HCHS/SOL used in this paper are archived at the NIH repositories dbGap (accession no. phs000810.v1.p1) and BioLINCC (accession no. HLB01141418a), and gut microbiome sequence data in this study are deposited in QIITA (study ID 11666). HCHS/SOL has established a process for the scientific community to apply for access to participant data and materials, with such requests reviewed by the project’s Steering Committee. These policies are described at https://sites.cscc.unc.edu/hchs/ (accessed December 2022). Original data from the UKB used in the present study are available at https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

No custom codes or functions were generated for this manuscript. All codes regarding the main analyses or data visualization can be made available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author.

References

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Acknowledgements

The present work is supported by R01-DK119268 (to Q.Q.) and R01-DK126698 (to Q.Q.) from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), and R01-MD011389 (to R.C.K.) from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. K.L. is supported by an AHA postdoctoral fellowship award (23POST1020455). Other funding sources for this study include UM1-HG008898 from the National Human Genome Research Institute; R01-HL060712, R01-HL140976 and R01-HL136266 from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI); and R01-DK120870 and the New York Regional Center for Diabetes Translation Research (P30-DK111022) from the NIDDK. Support for metabolomics data was graciously provided by the JLH Foundation (Houston, Texas). The HCHS/SOL is a collaborative study supported by contracts from the NHLBI to the University of North Carolina (HHSN268201300001I/N01-HC-65233), University of Miami (HHSN268201300004I/N01-HC-65234), Albert Einstein College of Medicine (HHSN268201300002I/N01-HC-65235), University of Illinois at Chicago (HHSN268201300003I/N01-HC-65236 Northwestern University) and San Diego State University (HHSN268201300005I/N01-HC-65237). The following institutes/centres/offices have contributed to the HCHS/SOL through a transfer of funds to the NHLBI: National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, NIDDK, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Institution-Office of Dietary Supplements. We thank the staff and participants of HCHS/SOL for their important contributions. A complete list of staff and investigators is available on the study website at https://sites.cscc.unc.edu/cscc/. The funding agencies had no role in the data analyses and results interpretation.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, NY, USA

    Kai Luo, Yanbo Zhang, Robert C. Kaplan & Qibin Qi

  2. Public Health Sciences Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA, USA

    Robert C. Kaplan

  3. Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Qibin Qi

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  1. Kai Luo
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  2. Yanbo Zhang
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  4. Qibin Qi
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Contributions

K.L. and Y.Z. conducted the analyses. K.L. prepared the tables and figures and drafted the manuscript. R.C.K. and Q.Q. critically revised the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Qibin Qi.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Metabolism thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: Ashley Castellanos-Jankiewicz, in collaboration with the Nature Metabolism team.

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Source Data Fig. 1

Source data for results shown in Fig. 1.

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Luo, K., Zhang, Y., Kaplan, R.C. et al. Reply to: Milk intake, lactase non-persistence and type 2 diabetes risk in Chinese adults. Nat Metab 6, 2057–2059 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42255-024-01129-1

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