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Scientists announced yesterday the discovery of important genetic clues to diabetes, opening a new chapter in the study of the fast-growing disease.
An international team studying type 2 diabetes, which affects about 20 million Americans, identified two genes as culprits in the disease, and pointed to several others as potentially involved.
The results, published online yesterday by the journal Nature, will help in the search for treatments. But they are also significant because they are a striking confirmation of the power of a new kind of genetic study. This technique, which involves rapidly scanning large amounts of DNA from a large number of patients, is also being used by three other teams to identify more diabetes-related genes, and results from all the studies are expected to be announced in the coming months.
After decades of frustratingly slow progress, in which only a handful of genes have been definitively identified, researchers said the new report shows that scientists stand on the brink of identifying many important genes involved with the most common form of diabetes. This will allow them to understand...