Mitochondrial haplogroups associated with lifestyle-related diseases and longevity in the Japanese population.

Recently published results on the association between metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, myocardial infarction or atherothrombotic cerebral infarction and Japanese major haplogroups based on the comprehensive analysis of mitochondrial genome polymorphisms (mtSNP) in the coding region of human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), and longevity-related haplogroups are described in the present review. Our aim was to provide information that would allow us to predict the genetic risk for lifestyle-related diseases and thereby contribute to the primary prevention of these conditions. The mitochondrial genome variation is so large that a given haplogroup might consist of various subhaplogroups carrying unique and presumably functional mtSNP. The frequency of each subhaplogroup is sometimes only a few percent. Therefore, large-scale association study is necessary for elucidating the impact of each subhaplogroup on the susceptibility to various common diseases.