Type 2 Diabetes Origin in Intestine, Early Detection by Gut Bacteria Test

Many Americans suffering from Type 2 diabetes and they may not be even aware of it. However, a new study says that gut bacteria can reveal whether you suffer from the disease or not.

"We have demonstrated that people with Type 2 diabetes have a high level of pathogens in their intestines," says professor Jun Wang from the University of Copenhagen's Department of Biology and Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research.

According to the study the bacteria that are present in our intestines have a massive impact on our health and well being. The bacteria that live in a sensitive equilibrium can trigger health issues when this equilibrium is disrupted.

For this study the scientists examined the intestinal bacteria of 345 people from China, of which 171 had Type 2 diabetes. They also identified biological indicators that someday could be used in methods that provide faster and earlier diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes.

The research also demonstrated that people with Type 2 diabetes have a more hostile bacterial environment in their intestines, which can increase resistance to different medicines.

Similarly studies that were carried on the victims of Type 2 diabetes in Denmark discovered a significant imbalance in the function of their intestinal bacteria and composition.

"We are going to transplant gut bacteria from people that suffer from Type 2 diabetes into mice and examine whether the mice then develop diabetes," says another of the lead scientists behind the project, professor Oluf Borbye Pedersen from the University of Copenhagen and centre director at LuCamp, the Lundbeck Foundation Centre for Applied Medical Genomics in Personalised Disease Prediction, Prevention and Care.

According to Professor Karsten Kristiansen from the University of Copenhagen's Department of Biology, the new discovery is a significant step in the complete international research that is in progress to investigate the interplay between intestinal bacteria and health.

"The European and Chinese working on the MetaHIT project were able to make important new discoveries about the relationship between intestinal bacteria and health. The new discovery indicates a possible connection between Type 2 diabetes and the intestinal bacteria in Chinese people," Kristiansen says.

"It is important to point out that our discovery demonstrates a correlation. The big question now is whether the changes in gut bacteria can affect the development of Type 2 diabetes or whether the changes simply reflect that the person is suffering from Type 2 diabetes."