Frequency and phenotype of type 1 diabetes in the first six decades of life: a cross-sectional, genetically stratified survival analysis from UK Biobank

Publication date: Available online 30 November 2017 Source:The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology Author(s): Nicholas J Thomas, Samuel E Jones, Michael N Weedon, Beverley M Shields, Richard A Oram, Andrew T Hattersley Background Type 1 diabetes is typically considered a disease of children and young adults. Genetic susceptibility to young-onset type 1 diabetes is well defined and does not predispose to type 2 diabetes. It is not known how frequently genetic susceptibility to type 1 diabetes leads to a diagnosis of diabetes after age 30 years. We aimed to investigate the frequency and phenotype of type 1 diabetes resulting from high genetic susceptibility in the first six decades of life. Methods In this cross-sectional analysis, we used a type 1 diabetes genetic risk score based on 29 common variants to identify individuals of white European descent in UK Biobank in the half of the population with high or low genetic susceptibility to type 1 diabetes. We used Kaplan-Meier analysis to evaluate the number of cases of diabetes in both groups in the first six decades of life. We genetically defined type 1 diabetes as the additional cases of diabetes that occurred in the high genetic susceptibility group compared with the low genetic susceptibility group. All remaining cases were defined as type 2 diabetes. We assessed the clinical characteristics of the groups with genetically defined type 1 or type 2 diabetes. Findings 13 250 (3·5%) of 379 511 white European ...
Source: The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology - Category: Endocrinology Source Type: research