I have written before about the many factors that may contribute towards the development of diabetes, and here is some more evidence to support the idea that there may be many more types of diabetes than two.

A large study co-ordinated by the Broad Institute at MIT in collaboration with the WTCCC/UKT2D and the FUSION consortia have found 6 new single-nucleotide changes that are associated with Type 2 diabetes. These, along with the 8 genetic risk factors previously found by these groups adds to the number of genetic contributors to diabetes.

The collaboration between groups is vital to finding new gene changes, since much larger population samples can be studied to a level at which changes can be found. Below these numbers, significant changes can easily be missed. The differences identified in studies of this type are important guides, which can be used for animal studies to find out whether they might be clinically important in humans, and so offer hopes for completely or partially curative gene therapy.

Zeggini E, et al. Meta-analysis of genome-wide association data and large-scale replication identifies additional susceptibility loci for type 2 diabetes. Nature Genetics. doi:10.1038/ng.120.