association of new loci identified in european genomewide association studies with susceptibility to type 2 diabetes in the japanese background several novel susceptibility loci for type 2 diabetes have been identified through genomewide association studies gwas for type 2 diabetes or quantitative traits related to glucose metabolism in european populations to investigate the association of the 13 new european gwasderived susceptibility loci with type 2 diabetes in the japanese population we conducted a replication study using 3 independent japanese casecontrol studiesmethodologyprincipal findings we examined the association of single nucleotide polymorphisms snps within 13 loci mtnr1b gck irs1 prox1 bcl11a zbed3 klf14 tp53inp1 kcnq1 centd2 hmga2 zfand6 and prc1 with type 2 diabetes using 4964 participants 2839 cases and 2125 controls from 3 independent japanese samples the association of each snp with type 2 diabetes was analyzed by logistic regression analysis further we performed combined metaanalyses for the 3 studies and previously performed japanese gwas data 4470 cases vs 3071 controls the metaanalysis revealed that rs2943641 in the irs1 locus was significantly associated with type 2 diabetes p 00034 or 115 95 confidence interval 105126 and 3 snps rs10930963 in the mtnr1b locus rs972283 in the klf14 locus and rs231362 in the kcnq1 locus had nominal association with type 2 diabetes in the present japanese samples p005conclusions these results indicate that irs1 locus may be common locus for type 2 diabetes across different ethnicities