The incidence of type 2 diabetes is rising rapidly in the United States and throughout the industrialized world. The increasing prevalence of T2D is believed to be due in large measure to the rapid increase in obesity and to more sedentary lifestyles in general. Yet while obesity, lack of exercise and high-calorie diet are all major known risk factors, it has long been recognized that certain individuals are more susceptible to developing T2D than others, even after accounting for shared lifestyle and health factors. This differential is the hallmark of the impact of genetic risk factors. The risk variant in the TCF7L2 gene discovered by deCODE in 2006 is the first widely-replicated, common variant ever found to associate with substantial increased risk of T2D as a public health problem.
If you are a physician, you likely have many patients who need to lose weight, get more exercise and improve their diet. As you know, many of these patients are at increased risk of developing T2D. You may also have patients who are already prediabetic, with fasting plasma glucose levels of between 100 and 125 mg/dL, who are at even higher risk. You also know that your efforts to get your patients to change their lifestyle and address know risk factors for T2D are not always successful. Additional information on which of your patients may be at highest risk could provide you and your patients with added incentive to implement and stick to preventive regimes that can reduce the risk of T2D, possibly including certain existing medications aimed at slowing the progression from prediabetes to full-blown T2D.
deCODE T2™ is a reference laboratory test to detect a version of a single SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) – a one letter variation in the sequence of the genome – in the TCF7L2 gene that deCODE has linked to increased risk of T2D. In deCODE’s research, validated in studies by independent researchers in tens of thousands of people from populations around the globe, individuals carrying two copies of the risk variant were found to be at more than twice the risk of type 2 diabetes as are individuals without the risk variant. The risk variant is the “T” allele of SNP rs7903146, locate within the transcription factor 7-like 2 (TCF7L2) gene.