-It is a completely novel method within diabetes research which can give us crucial information regarding the course of the disease, says Thomas Moritz, professor at the Umeå Plant Science Centre. With the aid of advanced analytical instruments he will characterize samples of blood serum that will be provided by the collaborators at Lund University diabetes centre. With the analysis several hundred metabolites can be measured in each sample. The generated data will be compiled, analysed and interpreted using chemometric methods.

-We want to know how these patterns of metabolites appear shortly before the disease onset, says Johan Trygg, responsible for the data analysis, and continues to tell that the project has already been initiated and thus far the technique lives up to the expectations.

In the first phase the researchers are working with a gene modified strain of rats that are prone to develop diabetes. These rats stay healthy until they develop diabetes between 50 and 70 days of age.

-Something dramatic happens then. Within the course of 24 hours the sugar regulation breaks down. Right now we are analysing the metabolites to see whether they can tell us what happens, says Åke Lernmark, professor in experimental diabetes research at the Lund University diabetes centre.

To obtain as detailed disease profiles as possible the researchers will use a novel, individual based, approach where each rat is used as its own reference. A comparison between healthy and diseased rats would likely be easier to perform, but then important details would be lost.

In the second phase blood samples from 4 000 children taking part in the Diabetes Prediction in Skåne (DiPiS) investigation will be analysed. The children are genetically predisposed to type 1 diabetes, but the current methods have low specificity and most will not develop the disease.

-More accurate predictions may make it ethically sensible to apply preventive measures that slow down the course of events. To measure patterns of metabolites is also simpler and cheaper than the gene tests that are used today. We hope that it will soon be possible to predict type 1 diabetes simply by a urine test, says Johan Trygg.

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