Clinical Risk Factors, DNA Variants, and the Development of Type 2 Diabetes

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is thought to develop from an interaction between environmental and genetic factors. We examined whether clinical or genetic factors or both could predict progression to diabetes in two prospective cohorts.

We genotyped 16 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and examined clinical factors in 16,061 Swedish and 2770 Finnish subjects. Type 2 diabetes developed in 2201 (11.7%) of these subjects during a median follow-up period of 23.5 years. We also studied the effect of genetic variants on changes in insulin secretion and action over time.