Italian researchers report that the Mediterranean diet may help people with type 2 diabetes stay off blood sugar-lowering medications.

A Canadian scientist, now based in the UK and funded by the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, has harnessed a new drug discovery tool to identify a new player in the body's insulin secretion process. This finding could spark a completely new class of drugs to treat type 2 diabetes.

Drugs widely used to treat type 2 diabetes may be more likely to keep working if they are used in moderation, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found in a study using an animal model.

In a study published by the Lancet journal today, Toronto researcher Dr. Daniel Drucker reported that a new once-weekly treatment for type 2 diabetes could replace the more common twice-daily injection.

Scientists have found that consuming cocoa flavanols – naturally occurring compounds in cocoa – may offer a benefit to those affected by type-2 diabetes.

Doctors are aware of a range of risk factors, mostly related to the patients’ family history, overweight, and lifestyle, that contribute to the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

The National Health Service (NHS) in the UK is spending Ј100 million a year to help people with non-insulin treated type 2 diabetes monitor their own blood sugar levels, but the process is more likely to make them depressed than provide any long-term health benefits, according to a series of articles published ahead of print on bmj.com today.

Type 2 Diabetes is a chronic disease with rising prevalence rates throughout the world. In Germany, about 8 million people are affected. These numbers could even be an underestimation as a relatively high number of undiagnosed diabetics remains. The newly-published meta analysis 1) on the genetics of type 2 diabetes casts new light on the origin of this disease.

The current era of high-throughput genome scanning brings with it a surge in the discovery of genetic markers that confer risk to human disease. These findings result from whole genome association studies, in which the genomes of many people are scanned on microarrays to locate genes related to diseases like type 2 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and Crohn’s disease.

An international collaboration of scientists from Europe and the US has identified six new genes which play a role in the development of type 2 diabetes, extending the total number of genes implicated in common forms of the disease to sixteen.

While analyzing data from Saskatchewan health databases, Lauren Brown, researcher with the U of A’s School of Public Health, found people with a history of depression had a 30 per cent increased risk of type 2 Diabetes.

It may soon be possible to take a simple blood test and predict whether or not someone has low levels of a particular molecule, predisposing them to the development of Type 2 diabetes. If the test is positive, it may then be possible to use preventative treatment, slowing down, or even halting that development.