Low birth weight increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes later in life. Until recently scientists had attributed this to maternal malnutrition during pregnancy. However, now it seems that genetic background may also play a major role. A research team of Technische Universität München and Helmholtz Zentrum München has now demonstrated, that gene variants which influence insu...

Intensive lifestyle changes aimed at modest weight loss reduced the rate of developing type 2 diabetes by 34 percent compared with placebo in people at high risk for the disease, researchers conclude based on 10 years of data. Participants randomly assigned to make lifestyle changes also had more favorable cardiovascular risk factors, including lower blood pressure and triglyceride levels, despite...

Mathematicians at Michigan Technological University have developed powerful new tools for winnowing out the genes behind some of humanity’s most intractable diseases. With one, they can cast back through generations to pinpoint the genes behind inherited illness. With another, they have isolated 11 variations within genes—called single nucleotide polymorphisms, SNPs or "snips"...

Diabetes increases by 26 percent the likelihood that women will develop atrial fibrillation (AF), a potentially dangerous irregular heart rhythm that can lead to stroke, heart failure, and chronic fatigue. These are the findings of a new Kaiser Permanente study, published in the October issue of Diabetes Care, a journal of the American Diabetes Association. While other studies have found that pati...

Individuals living in neighborhoods conducive to physical activity and providing access to healthy foods may have a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes in a five-year period, according to a report in the October 12 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. "The worldwide epidemic of type 2 diabetes mellitus is largely driven by the combined rise in obesit...

A recent study by researchers from the University of Colorado looked at post-transplant care to determine whether primary care physicians (PCPs) or hepatologists are better suited to manage the overall health care of patients who received a liver transplant (LT). Researchers learned that hepatologists believe metabolic complications to be common in LT patients, but not well controlled. The hepatol...

Nutrition scientists led by Young-Cheul Kim at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have identified the molecular pathway that allows foods rich in soy bioactive compounds called isoflavones to lower diabetes and heart disease risk. Eating soy foods has been shown to lower cholesterol, decrease blood glucose levels and improve glucose tolerance in people with diabetes. According to Kim, the stu...

We`ve all heard about the damage that reactive oxygen species (ROS) – aka free radicals – can do to our bodies and the sales pitches for antioxidant vitamins, skin creams or "superfoods" that can stop them. In fact, there is considerable scientific evidence that chronic ROS production within cells can contribute to human diseases, including insulin resistance and type 2 diabe...

Diabetes prevalence is highest in the Southern and Appalachian states and lowest in the Midwest and the Northeast of America. Researchers writing in BioMed Central`s open access journal Population Health Metrics have used two public data sources to investigate the prevalence of diagnosed and undiagnosed diabetes mellitus at the State level. Goodarz Danaei, from the Harvard School of Public Health,...

Insulin resistance, the hallmark of type 2 diabetes and a condition often associated with obesity, is paradoxically also an apparent contributor to muscle wasting and severe fat loss that accompanies some cancers, according to new research. And in an animal study, a diabetes drug that promotes insulin sensitivity slowed the progression of muscle wasting and fat loss, the main consequences of a syn...