Grant to check genetics to assist diabetes sort analysis in youngsters

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Baylor College of Medicine will serve as the lead center for a multicenter international project aimed at using genetics to diagnose diabetes in children.

Diagnosing diabetes in children can be difficult because of overlapping features between type 1 and type 2 diabetes, especially in non-Caucasian children. The researchers will investigate whether and how genetics can help classify the type of diabetes at the beginning so that proper treatment can be started as soon as possible after diagnosis. Centers will receive $ 2,665,254 over four years.

“Type 1 diabetes is more common in children than type 2 diabetes, although type 2 diabetes is increasing rapidly, especially in minority children,” said Dr. Maria Redondo, Professor of Pediatrics – Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism at Baylor and Texas Children’s Hospital and principal investigator on the study. “The problem is that there are a lot of cases that we can’t accurately diagnose as Type 1 or Type 2 at the outset.”

The researchers will study children with diabetes who are cared for at Texas Children’s or Emory University between the ages of six months and 18 years and have different ethnic and racial backgrounds: Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Caucasians. They will study their properties initially along with genetic markers associated with diabetes and link this to their ability to produce insulin. They chose the loss of the ability to make insulin as an indicator of type 1 diabetes because it is the characteristic of type 1 diabetes that has the greatest impact on clinical management. The biostatisticians will create a model that integrates all variables and predicts the loss of the ability to produce insulin.

“We believe that our model can help doctors determine the type of diabetes at the time the onset of diabetes occurs, so that appropriate treatment can be started as soon as possible as the disease progresses. This is important because delays or mistakes in proper treatment increase the risk of complications in diabetes, both acute (such as diabetic ketoacidosis or severe hypoglycemia) and chronic (such as kidney, eye or cardiovascular diseases), ”said Redondo.

Dr. Mustafa Tosur, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics – Diabetes and Endocrinology at Baylor and Texas Children’s, is a co-investigator on the study.

Other participating centers working with Baylor include Emory University, the University of Colorado, the University of Florida, the University of South Florida and Washington University in the US, and the University of Exeter in the UK.

This project was funded by the National Institute for Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, an entity within the National Institutes of Health.