Biomarkers for type 2 diabetes

Background: The prevalence and incidence of type 2 diabetes (T2D), representing >90% of all cases of diabetes, are increasing rapidly worldwide. Identification of individuals at high risk of developing diabetes is of great importance as early interventions might delay or even prevent full-blown disease. T2D is a complex disease caused by multiple genetic loci in interplay with lifestyle and environmental factors. Recently over 400 distinct association signals were published; these explain 18% of the risk of T2D. Scope of review: In this review there is a major focus on risk factors and genetic and non-genetic biomarkers for the risk of T2D identified especially in large prospective population-based studies, and studies testing causality of the biomarkers for T2D in Mendelian randomization studies. Another focus is on understanding genome-phenome interplay in the classification of individuals with T2D into subgroups. Major conclusions: Several recent large population-based studies and their meta-analyses have identified multiple potential genetic and non-genetic biomarkers for the risk of T2D.Combination of genetic variants and physiologically characterized pathways improves the classification of individuals with T2D into subgroups, and is also paving the way to a precision medicine approach, in T2D. (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier GmbH.