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Epigenetic mechanisms underlying type 2 diabetes mellitus

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The aetiology of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) involves interactions between genetic, developmental and lifestyle environmental risk factors, which are partly influenced by epigenetic processes. Multhaup and colleagues have combined genome-wide analysis with analyses of an animal model of insulin resistance and tissues from individuals with obesity obtained before and after gastric bypass surgery to identify novel potential pathways that contribute to T2DM pathogenesis.

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Figure 1: The risk of noncommunicable diseases such as T2DM increases in a nonlinear fashion throughout the life course, with contributions from fixed genetic effects, lifestyle and development, which are partially reversible by gastric bypass surgery.

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  • 10 April 2015

    In the version of this article originally published online, the page range of the original citation was incorrect. The correct page range is 129–136 not 136–129. This has now been corrected in the HTML, PDF and print versions of the article.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are supported by The British Heart Foundation and the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre, University of Southampton and University Hospital Southampton NHS Trust, Southampton, UK.

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Correspondence to Mark A. Hanson.

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Hanson, M., Godfrey, K. Epigenetic mechanisms underlying type 2 diabetes mellitus. Nat Rev Endocrinol 11, 261–263 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrendo.2015.31

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