Research

Hormonal

Type 2 diabetes risk in Europeans is predominantly driven by common genetic variants of modest effect size, with no novel low-frequency variants of moderate-to-strong effect detected despite extensive sample sizes.

This research indicates that for most people of European ancestry, Type 2 Diabetes risk is largely determined by common genetic factors with small individual effects, rather than rare, high-impact mutations. This means lifestyle interventions remain critical because they address the environmental and physiological pathways (insulin secretion, action) that these genes influence, even if the genetic risk itself cannot be changed.

StrongRefutesVERY_HIGH confidence
These findings are consistent with the inference... that the T2D-risk signals identified by GWAS are overwhelmingly driven by common causal variants... we found no such low-frequency variant associations in either established or novel loci.
Robert A. Scott et al. · Diabetes · 2017

Why this rating

Large-scale meta-analysis of over 150,000 controls and 26,000 cases with rigorous statistical correction.

Source

An Expanded Genome-Wide Association Study of Type 2 Diabetes in Europeans

Robert A. Scott et al. · Diabetes · 2017

DOI 10.2337/db16-1253

Meta-analysis · 18 studiesCited 808×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

This is one finding among thousands. Every one is graded and traced to its source, so you can see what the evidence actually supports. Browse the research →