Diabetes may stem from mistakes in ‘common’ genes

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.

A study examining the genes of more than 120,000 people from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas has offered the clearest picture yet of the genes that drive type 2 diabetes.

Prior studies turned up more than 80 spots in the genome associated with the development of adult-onset diabetes, but most of these genetic errors were common, meaning they occurred frequently in the population, and they explained only a small fraction of disease risk.

Critics, including geneticist Dr. David Goldstein at Columbia University, argued that such studies were a waste of resources because they only found common variants that explained just a small fraction of the risk for disease.

[Researchers] found that…most of the genetic risk for type 2 diabetes is caused by common mistakes in the genetic code, with each mistake contributing only a small portion of an individual’s risk for developing the disease.

“These represent promising avenues for efforts to design new ways to treat or prevent the disease,” said Mark McCarthy, a senior author of the study[.]

Read full, original post: Huge study of diabetes risk shows many common genes at play

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