Diabetes complications found to run in families

If your mom, dad, sister, or brother has diabetes, you’re more likely to develop the disease. Now a new study shows that heredity may affect the likelihood of developing diabetes complications as well. Researchers looked at 25 years worth of data on patients with type 1 diabetes and their families. They found that if your brother or sister has had kidney, nerve, or—especially—eye problems, you are more likely to develop those problems, too. You are also more likely to develop complications if one of your parents had type 2 diabetes or if you were diagnosed with diabetes between the ages of 5 and 14. And if you have one complication, you’re more likely to develop another. Finally, you’re more likely to develop problems if you’re a woman.

This doesn’t mean you don’t have any control over whether or not you will develop complications. “Tight glucose control is still key,” says David A. Greenberg, PhD, director of the Division of Statistical Genetics at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City and one of the study’s authors. “We have long believed that tight control could prevent diabetes complications. But our results suggest that there is a genetic element behind the development of complications as well.”