PCSK9 and type 2 diabetes mellitus: Of particular importance was our analysis of four candidate loci: HMGCR, PCSK9, APOB and LPA. HMGCR encodes 3-hydroxy-3-methyl-glutaryl-CoA reductase, the intended pharmacological target of statins, and is recognized to increase risk of T2D, both from randomized clinical trials (Preiss et al. 2011; Sattar et al. 2010) and from a recent large-scale Mendelian randomization study (Swerdlow et al. 2015).