my last post of the term!

Recently, the New York Times posted a story about a variant gene that leads to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes. The gene has been found in Americans, Icelanders, and Danish populations. The long term hope for this discovery is a diagnostics test. The test would find those who carry the variant gene, and tell them of their excessive risk, giving those at risk a better chance to stay fit and healthy. This is an inhereted trait, which is why it makes the variant gene problem so dangerous. About 7% of the population carry one copy of the gene, and they are at a 141% greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Currently 20.8 million Americans have been diagnosed with diabetes, 95% of those with Type 2 diabetes. It poses a great health risk especially to overweight, Latinos, African-Americans, Native American-Indians, and Asian-Americans.
Diabetes has been recognized and treated since the Middle Ages, but the first insulin treatments were used in the 1920's. The first realizations that Diabetes was linked to the pancreas were made in 1889, by European Scientists Joseph Von Mering and Oskar Minkowski. They removed the pancreas' of dogs, and saw results identical to that of humans who had Diabetes. From there several scientists helped create man made insulin, the hormone produced by the pancreas. The majority of research in the 1900's took place in the University of Toronto. Recently, more and more discoverys have been made, and Diabetes is a disease that can be treated through daily insulin injections, or other forms of insulin treatment.