Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
A rare gene variant linked to a high risk of developing type 2 diabetes has been discovered in people in Greenland. Some researchers have thought that rare genetic tweaks were unlikely to cause common diseases such as type 2 diabetes, a chronic, life-threatening disease that’s on the upswing in the United States and elsewhere.
Greenlanders who carry two copies of the newly discovered variant face more than 10 times the risk of getting type 2 diabetes than people without the variant. The unusually strong effect was found by studying about 5 percent of Greenland’s small population. The finding emphasizes the need for specialized studies to uncover genetic contributions to common diseases, Torben Hansen of the University of Copenhagen and colleagues say June 18 in Nature.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/gene-variant-tied-diabetes-greenlanders?mode=topic&context=69
Greenlanders who carry two copies of the newly discovered variant face more than 10 times the risk of getting type 2 diabetes than people without the variant. The unusually strong effect was found by studying about 5 percent of Greenland’s small population. The finding emphasizes the need for specialized studies to uncover genetic contributions to common diseases, Torben Hansen of the University of Copenhagen and colleagues say June 18 in Nature.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/gene-variant-tied-diabetes-greenlanders?mode=topic&context=69