How We're Advancing Care
Utilizing access to the very large population of patients at the Joslin Clinic and their relatives, investigators in this section aim to unravel the etiology of diabetes and its late complications. The section's major focus is on the genetic determinants, environmental risk factors, and natural history of the disease processes underlying the development of late diabetic complications such as nephropathy and cardiovascular disease and genetics of Mature Onset Diabetes of the Young (MODY).
Over the last 25 years multiple cross-sectional and longitudinal studies have been conducted involving 3,000 patients with type 1 diabetes and 3,000 with type 2 diabetes. In addition to clinical datasets, biobanks of blood, and urine specimens were established for each of these patients. The investigators use the biobanks and high-throughput technologies to determine genetics, proteomics, and metabolomics profiles of patients who were selected for specific studies. The data are analyzed using sophisticated epidemiologic, genetics and bioinformatics methods.