Health

Doctors should routinely test people’s feet to check for diabetes, that’s according to a former UK Health Minister and MEP who has become a campaigner for the disease after being diagnosed with it himself.

An experimental tablet treatment for child diabetes, where youngsters have traditionally had to inject themselves with sugar controlling insulin, could end up eradicating the disease altogether, according to the scientist leading the European NAIMIT project.

Diabetes is on the rise all around the world. In the EU alone, there are 33 million people diagnosed with diabetes. They include people of all ages and from all walks of life. The two main forms are insulin-dependent Type-1 diabetes and non-insulin-dependent Type-2 diabetes. Type-1 diabetes, which develops mainly in children and adolescents, is more aggressive. However the disease is not a tragedy, as three ‘Type-1’ patients explain. 

‘You will never become a scientist!’ For his teachers, a science career for John Gurdon, was no more than hypothetical. But the British professor who won the 2012 Nobel Prize for Medicine has only one piece of advice for aspiring researchers: ‘Don’t give up!’

Africans and Asians who migrate to Europe have a higher risk of diabetes than indigenous people as they adjust to a different diet and lifestyle. By looking at the development of diabetes in these groups, researchers hope to find out more about the disease and how to combat it both in Europe and worldwide.

Eat well and exercise. That is the simple message that could help reverse the spread of one of Europe’s most troubling epidemics – Type 2 diabetes.

It all started with the chance discovery of a country lane full of wild orchids by an inquisitive young girl in rural England. That young girl, Frances Ashcroft, would go on to become one of Europe’s leading diabetes researchers.