Scientists from Oxford, Dundee University and Exeter, followed patient data gathered in Tayside and Fife and tested the DNA of more than 32,000 people in five countries to track spots that harbor genetic risk factors for diabetes. The three new genes that have recently been discovered to develop Type 2 diabetes brings the total number of genes involved to nine.
The study, which was led jointly by researchers at the University of Oxford and the Peninsula Medical School in Exeter and forms part of the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium2, is called a "genome-wide association" study.
AP quotes Dr. Francis Collins, genetics chief at the National Institutes of Health, a co-author of the research unveiled Thursday as saying, "We have been for all of the last decade or more looking under the lamppost to try to find those genes ... and lots of times the lamplight was not actually where we wanted it."
The new discovery, by three international research teams that shared their findings, was published online Thursday by the journal Science. Separately on Thursday in the journal Nature Genetics, a tem of Iceland researchers also wrote that they found one of those same new genes that seemed to increase the diabetes risk most in people who aren't obese.
When a person is inflicted with Type 2 diabetes, his body gradually loses its ability to use insulin, a hormone key for turning blood sugar into insulin. Diabetes is also a leading cause of cardio-vascular disease, as high blood sugar damages blood vessels, and leads to kidney failure, blindness and amputations.
The main risk factors also include obesity and lack of exercise but a lot depend on heredity as has been seen that people with an affected parent or sibling are at 3.5 times greater risk of developing diabetes than people from diabetes-free families.
