A major genetic analysis is to be conducted on a European population to identify causes of diabetes, it has been announced.
US and Swedish scientists will work together to analyse genes from more than 9,000 people involved in the Scandinavian Botnia study.
The project involves some 1,400 families from Finland and southern Sweden. The families all have members with diabetes.
The cohort is attractive to genetic researchers because of the limited genetic diversity of the population of Finland.
Scientists will use exome sequencing to analyse the genomes of the participants.
Nikolay Oskolkov, a researcher at the Lund University Diabetes Centre, Sweden, said: “If we can understand the cause, we can study the molecular mechanism behind the disease, which would enable the development of new drugs to treat it."
Fellow researcher Leif Groop, head of the diabetes centre, said: “By studying hereditarily transmitted mutations in families, we can understand which causes are genetic, and which are environmental, ie due to lifestyle."
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