Research

Hormonal

Higher circulating concentrations of fatty acids produced via de novo lipogenesis (specifically 16:0, 16:1n7, and 18:0) are positively associated with an increased incidence of type 2 diabetes.

High levels of certain fats produced by your body (de novo lipogenesis) from carbs and alcohol are linked to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes. This suggests that managing carbohydrate and alcohol intake may help regulate these specific internal fat pathways, potentially lowering diabetes risk, independent of overall body weight.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
In pooled analyses, each of the fatty acids was positively associated with a higher risk of developing T2D. The associations were independent of major risk factors for T2D, such as age, sex, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic characteristics, smoking status, physical activity, and obesity.
Fumiaki Imamura et al. · PLoS Medicine · 2020

Why this rating

Large-scale pooled prospective cohort analysis with harmonized methods, but observational design limits causal inference.

Source

Fatty acids in the de novo lipogenesis pathway and incidence of type 2 diabetes: A pooled analysis of prospective cohort studies

Fumiaki Imamura et al. · PLoS Medicine · 2020

DOI 10.1371/journal.pmed.1003102

Meta-analysis · 17 studiesCited 71×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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