Research Yields New Insights Into The Cause Of Diabetes

... The cause of insulin-dependent, permanent diabetes in newborn babies may be a deficiency in the PERK enzyme during a critical period of development before birth, according to a new hypothesis be published in the journal Cell Metabolism on Dec. 6, 2006. Using special strains of mice bred to be PERK-deficient, the researchers found that what happens during fetal development predisposes people either to be able to maintain glucose levels normally or to have diabetes. ...