Study Finds Gene Mutation Associated with Type 2 Diabetes

(Source: KGOAM810 News, 03 March 2011)
Type 2 diabetes affects more than 200 million people worldwide. The disease involves an inability of bloodsugar to enter the cells to supply energy. A new study finds that about 10 percent of these patients in the United States and Europe have a gene mutation associated with the disease.

Dr. Ira Goldfine from the University of California, San Francisco, the co-author of the study, analyzed DNA from patients with and without Type 2 diabetes over a period of several years. Researchers found the HMGA-1 mutation -- a gene that makes a protein and when present tells the cells to make insulin receptors -- in a group of Italian diabetics and then replicated that finding in U.S. and French patients. "About 10 percent of Type 2 diabetics in the United States and Europe have defects in this gene," Dr. Goldfine says. Read more