A collaborative study which includes the University of Southern California (USC) has identified the gene responsible for regulating glucose levels.

According to Richard M. Watanabe, Ph.D., associate professor of preventive medicine and physiology & biophysics at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and co-senior author of the paper:

"Elevations of blood glucose are diagnostic of diabetes. This finding demonstrates there are gene variants that are important for day-to-day regulation of glucose, but they do not appear to play a significant role in disease risk.

The identification of these variants increases our basic biologic knowledge about regulation of glucose and may also be useful in future genetic studies to help discriminate between genetic variants that do or do not contribute to disease susceptibility."

The findings here may provide additional clues to the further understanding of the underlying cause of diabetes.

Read more from University of Southern California (USC).

[In Photo: Genetics of Diabetes Mellitus (Endocrine Updates) (Hardcover) by William L. Lowe Jr. from Amazon]