New genes related to type 1 diabetes discovered
Diabetic patients on a budget can buy their testing supplies and medications from a Canadian internet pharmacy, many of which sell cheap prescriptions and over the counter medications, including insulin.
Diabetic patients on a budget can buy their testing supplies and medications from a Canadian internet pharmacy, many of which sell cheap prescriptions and over the counter medications, including insulin. Newer therapies may be available in the future as well, thanks to ongoing research to discover genetic variations that may cause the disease.
Researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia studied DNA records taken from more than six public databases, which included about 10,000 people with type 1 diabetes and 17,000 controls. The review helped the scientists focus on single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which are genetic variations that may not necessarily cause disease, but can be part of a cascade of events leading to conditions such as diabetes.
The scientists found three new SNPs of interest, including one that may be linked to neuroblastoma, which is a cancer that mainly affects the nerve cells of children, as reported Sept 29 in Public Library of Science Genetics (PLoS Genetics). The research team will continue to study the genes containing these SNPs to find the mutations responsible for diabetes, and discover how the disease develops because of these mutations. Such information may potentially lead to new therapies that would improve the quality of life for patients.
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