We need effective strategies in place if we are going to stem the rapid rise in the number of cases of type 2 diabetes
- Nick Wareham
Over 380 million people worldwide are estimated to be affected by diabetes, with serious consequences for the health and economy of both developed and developing countries.
Type 2 diabetes is thought to originate from a complex interplay of a large number of genetic risk variants and lifestyle factors, such as diet and exercise. Lifestyle interventions can reduce the risk of developing diabetes in high-risk individuals by 50%; however, whether there is value in targeted lifestyle interventions according to a person’s genetic susceptibility is unclear.
In an attempt to answer this question, a team of researchers led by the University of Cambridge studied 12,403 middle-aged individuals from the 340,234 person European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) cohort who developed type 2 diabetes and a further control subset of 16,154 participants. The researchers calculated a genetic risk score for type 2 diabetes for these individuals based on which of 49 known genetic variants for the disease each person carried, and arranged the individuals into four equally-sized groups from lowest to highest genetic risk score. They then examined the combined effects of the genetic score and lifestyle factors on the development of diabetes. The results of the study, which was mainly funded by the European Commission under its Framework 6 programme, are published in the open access journal PLoS Medicine.
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Credit: Ralph Aichinger
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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