Researchers have identified 38 new genetic regions that are associated with glucose and insulin levels in the blood. This brings the total number of genetic regions associated with glucose and insulin levels to 53, over half of which are associated with type 2 diabetes. The researchers used a technology that is 100 times more powerful than previous techniques used to follow-up on genome-wide association results. This technology, Metabochip, was designed as a cost-effective way to find and map genomic regions for a range of cardiovascular and metabolic characteristics on a large scale. Previous approaches were not cost effective and tested only 30-40 DNA sequence variations, but this chip allowed researchers to look at up to 200,000DNA sequence variations for many different traits at one time. The team hoped to find new variants influencing blood glucose and insulin traits and to identify pathways involved in the regulation of insulin and glucose levels.
