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Editor’s Choice: Diabetes Week 2021

With over 400 million sufferers worldwide according to the World Health Organization, Diabetes Mellitus is an extremely common chronic disease which represents a global healthcare crisis.

The week commencing 14th June is UK Diabetes Week, recognized by the charity Diabetes UK which aims to raise awareness of this serious condition.

The Editors of BMC Medicine are delighted to share with you a selection of key papers that highlight some of the best Diabetes research published in the journal in recent years.

Diabetes Week 2021

  1. Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is a metabolic disease that occurs in pregnant women and increases the risk for the development of diabetes. The relationship between GDM and meconium microbiota and metabol...

    Authors: Ting Chen, Yufeng Qin, Minjian Chen, Yuqing Zhang, Xu Wang, Tianyu Dong, Guanglin Chen, Xian Sun, Ting Lu, Richard Allen White III, Peng Ye, Hein M. Tun and Yankai Xia
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2021 19:120
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  2. The associations between England’s incentivised primary care-based diabetes prevention activities and hard clinical endpoints remain unclear. We aimed to examine the associations between attainment of primary ...

    Authors: Ailsa J. McKay, Laura H. Gunn, Thirunavukkarasu Sathish, Eszter Vamos, Manjula Nugawela, Azeem Majeed, German Molina and Sobha Sivaprasad
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2021 19:93
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  3. It is unclear whether insulin resistance (IR) contributes to excess mortality in patients with type 2 diabetes independent of diabetic kidney disease (DKD), which is strongly associated with IR and is a major ...

    Authors: Giuseppe Penno, Anna Solini, Emanuela Orsi, Enzo Bonora, Cecilia Fondelli, Roberto Trevisan, Monica Vedovato, Franco Cavalot, Gianpaolo Zerbini, Olga Lamacchia, Antonio Nicolucci and Giuseppe Pugliese
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2021 19:66
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  4. The micronutrient iodine is essential for a healthy intrauterine environment and is required for optimal fetal growth and neurodevelopment. Evidence linking urinary iodine concentrations, which mainly reflects...

    Authors: Kristof Y. Neven, Bianca Cox, Charlotte Cosemans, Wilfried Gyselaers, Joris Penders, Michelle Plusquin, Harry A. Roels, Karen Vrijens, Ann Ruttens and Tim S. Nawrot
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2021 19:47
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  5. Clinical guidelines recommend a stepped-escalation treatment strategy for type 2 diabetes (T2DM). Across multiple treatment strategies varying in efficacy and costs, no clinical or economic studies directly co...

    Authors: Shuyan Gu, Lizheng Shi, Hui Shao, Xiaoyong Wang, Xiaoqian Hu, Yuxuan Gu and Hengjin Dong
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2020 18:378
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  6. Little is known about the inter-relationship among fruit and vegetable intake, gut microbiota and metabolites, and type 2 diabetes (T2D) in human prospective cohort study. The aim of the present study was to i...

    Authors: Zengliang Jiang, Ting-yu Sun, Yan He, Wanglong Gou, Luo-shi-yuan Zuo, Yuanqing Fu, Zelei Miao, Menglei Shuai, Fengzhe Xu, Congmei Xiao, Yuhui Liang, Jiali Wang, Yisong Xu, Li-peng Jing, Wenhua Ling, Hongwei Zhou…
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2020 18:371
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  7. Cortisol, a steroid hormone frequently used as a biomarker of stress, is associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). To clarify whether cortisol causes these outcomes, we ...

    Authors: Man Ki Kwok, Ichiro Kawachi, David Rehkopf and Catherine Mary Schooling
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2020 18:363
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  8. Limited evidence exists on the role of glucose-lowering drugs in patients with COVID-19. Our main objective was to examine the association between in-hospital death and each routine at-home glucose-lowering dr...

    Authors: Luis M. Pérez-Belmonte, José David Torres-Peña, María D. López-Carmona, M. Mar. Ayala-Gutiérrez, Francisco Fuentes-Jiménez, Lucía Jorge Huerta, Jaime Alonso Muñoz, Manuel Rubio-Rivas, Manel Madrazo, Marcos Guzmán Garcia, Beatriz Vicente Montes, Joaquim Fernández Sola, Javier Ena, Ruth Gonzalez Ferrer, Carmen Mella Pérez, Carlos Jorge Ripper…
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2020 18:359
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  9. The placebo response in patients with diabetes mellitus is very common. A systematic evaluation needs to be updated with the current evidence about the placebo response in diabetes mellitus and the associated ...

    Authors: Chu Lin, Xiaoling Cai, Wenjia Yang, Fang Lv, Lin Nie and Linong Ji
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2020 18:322
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  10. Data on the cost-effectiveness of lifestyle-based diabetes prevention programs are mostly from high-income countries, which cannot be extrapolated to low- and middle-income countries. We performed a trial-based c...

    Authors: Thirunavukkarasu Sathish, Brian Oldenburg, Kavumpurathu R. Thankappan, Pilvikki Absetz, Jonathan E. Shaw, Robyn J. Tapp, Paul Z. Zimmet, Sajitha Balachandran, Suman S. Shetty, Zahra Aziz and Ajay Mahal
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2020 18:251
    Content type: Research article Published on:

    The Correspondence to this article has been published in BMC Medicine 2020 18:379

  11. The EXAMINE trial tested the efficacy and safety of alogliptin, an inhibitor of dipeptidyl peptidase 4, compared with placebo in 5380 patients with type 2 diabetes and a recent acute coronary syndrome. Because...

    Authors: João Pedro Ferreira, Cyrus Mehta, Abhinav Sharma, Steven E. Nissen, Patrick Rossignol and Faiez Zannad
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2020 18:165
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  12. The cytokine IL-17 is a key player in autoimmune processes, while the cytokine IL-6 is responsible for the chronification of inflammation. However, their roles in type 1 diabetes development are still unknown.

    Authors: Anne Jörns, Daichi Ishikawa, Hiroki Teraoku, Toshiaki Yoshimoto, Dirk Wedekind and Sigurd Lenzen
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2020 18:33
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  13. Although lifestyle factors have been studied in relation to individual non-communicable diseases (NCDs), their association with development of a subsequent NCD, defined as multimorbidity, has been scarcely inv...

    Authors: Heinz Freisling, Vivian Viallon, Hannah Lennon, Vincenzo Bagnardi, Cristian Ricci, Adam S. Butterworth, Michael Sweeting, David Muller, Isabelle Romieu, Pauline Bazelle, Marina Kvaskoff, Patrick Arveux, Gianluca Severi, Christina Bamia, Tilman Kühn, Rudolf Kaaks…
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2020 18:5
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  14. Associations between type 2 diabetes (T2D) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) were discovered in observational studies in both European and East Asian populations. However, whether such associations are c...

    Authors: Ping Zeng, Ting Wang, Junnian Zheng and Xiang Zhou
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2019 17:225
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  15. Insulin resistance (IR) is predictive for type 2 diabetes and associated with various metabolic abnormalities in fasting conditions. However, limited data are available on how IR affects metabolic responses in...

    Authors: Qin Wang, Jari Jokelainen, Juha Auvinen, Katri Puukka, Sirkka Keinänen-Kiukaanniemi, Marjo-Riitta Järvelin, Johannes Kettunen, Ville-Petteri Mäkinen and Mika Ala-Korpela
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2019 17:217
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  16. The objective of this cross-sectional study was to explore the relationship of detectable C-peptide secretion in type 1 diabetes to clinical features and to the genetic architecture of diabetes.

    Authors: Paul M. McKeigue, Athina Spiliopoulou, Stuart McGurnaghan, Marco Colombo, Luke Blackbourn, Timothy J. McDonald, Suna Onengut-Gomuscu, Stephen S. Rich, Colin N. A. Palmer, John A. McKnight, Mark W. J. Strachan, Alan W. Patrick, John Chalmers, Robert S. Lindsay, John R. Petrie, Sandeep Thekkepat…
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2019 17:165
    Content type: Research article Published on:

    The Commentary to this article has been published in BMC Medicine 2019 17:179

  17. The presence of additional chronic conditions has a significant impact on the treatment and management of type 2 diabetes (T2DM). Little is known about the patterns of comorbidities in this population. The aim...

    Authors: Magdalena Nowakowska, Salwa S. Zghebi, Darren M. Ashcroft, Iain Buchan, Carolyn Chew-Graham, Tim Holt, Christian Mallen, Harm Van Marwijk, Niels Peek, Rafael Perera-Salazar, David Reeves, Martin K. Rutter, Stephen F. Weng, Nadeem Qureshi, Mamas A. Mamas and Evangelos Kontopantelis
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2019 17:145
    Content type: Research article Published on:

    The Correction to this article has been published in BMC Medicine 2020 18:22

  18. Smartphone apps are becoming increasingly popular for supporting diabetes self-management. A key aspect of diabetes self-management is appropriate medication-taking. This study aims to systematically assess an...

    Authors: Zhilian Huang, Elaine Lum, Geronimo Jimenez, Monika Semwal, Peter Sloot and Josip Car
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2019 17:127
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  19. Studies have suggested sex differences in the mortality rate associated with diabetes. We conducted a meta-analysis to estimate the relative effect of diabetes on the risk of all-cause, cancer, cardiovascular ...

    Authors: Yafeng Wang, Adrienne O’Neil, Yurui Jiao, Lijun Wang, Jingxin Huang, Yutao Lan, Yikun Zhu and Chuanhua Yu
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2019 17:136
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  20. Monogenic diabetes (MgD) accounts for 1–2% of all diabetes cases. In adults, MgD is difficult to distinguish from common diabetes causes. We assessed the diagnosis rate and genetic spectrum of MgD using next-g...

    Authors: Xavier Donath, Cécile Saint-Martin, Danièle Dubois-Laforgue, Ramanan Rajasingham, François Mifsud, Cécile Ciangura, José Timsit and Christine Bellanné-Chantelot
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2019 17:132
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  21. Autoimmune diseases are often preceded by an asymptomatic autoantibody-positive phase. In type 1 diabetes, the detection of autoantibodies to pancreatic islet antigens in genetically at-risk children is progno...

    Authors: Verena Sophia Hoffmann, Andreas Weiß, Christiane Winkler, Annette Knopff, Manja Jolink, Ezio Bonifacio and Anette-G. Ziegler
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2019 17:125
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  22. Understanding where adults with diabetes in India are lost in the diabetes care cascade is essential for the design of targeted health interventions and to monitor progress in health system performance for man...

    Authors: Jonas Prenissl, Lindsay M. Jaacks, Viswanathan Mohan, Jennifer Manne-Goehler, Justine I. Davies, Ashish Awasthi, Anne Christine Bischops, Rifat Atun, Till Bärnighausen, Sebastian Vollmer and Pascal Geldsetzer
    Citation: BMC Medicine 2019 17:92
    Content type: Research article Published on: