All five metabolites remained significantly associated with GALNT2 mRNA levels in a multivariate model that included age, gender, smoking habits, BMI, HbA1c, diabetes duration, eGFR, and current treatments (P values = 0.0027, 0.000049, 0.013253, 0.035 and 0.00067, for glycine, asparagine, ADMA, phenylethylamine and taurine, respectively), thus indicating that their correlation with GALNT2 expression is independent of the most important clinical variables (Fig. 1B). The gene discussed is GALNT2; the disease is diabetes mellitus.