It is noteworthy that the case-control study design adopted by the current and other studies tend to be limited by the heterogeneity of the prevalent cases with regards to T2D ascertainment, i.e., both those have developed T2D and those have survived in the setting of T2D were included as cases. Therefore, those 'susceptible to' the disease were not distinguished from those 'survived' the disease'. One possibility to circumvent such issue is to examine for similar duration of diabetes across studies being compared and test for difference in duration of T2D by SNP. Interestingly, while our results did not support an association between APOM and T2D susceptibility, stratification of our cases by disease duration allowed us to detect an association between rs805297(C-1065A) and T2D duration. This result implied the possibility that relative to the rs805297-A carriers, the rs805297-C carriers better survived the diabetic condition over the long term and such possibility can be further tested. Interestingly, Zhao et al., recently reported a positive association between rs805297-A and the risk of stroke in Norhtern Chinese (OR = 1.38, p = 0.002) after adjusting for other risk factors including history of diabetes [26] . Whether such association is present among the Southern Chinese requires further investigation. Nevertheless, losing rs805297-A carriers with T2D to stroke over time provides a plausible explanation for the observed higher frequency of rs805297-C allele in the T2D duration .10 years subgroup (relative to T2D duration #10 years subgroup).