Many people have a genetic predisposition to develop diabetes if they become obese, usually from several genes that each contribute a little bit. People with a variant of the gene PPARgamma tend to be more obese, which may make them tend to be diabetic. However, normally PPARgamma helps insulin work better to prevent diabetes (it is the receptor for the diabetes medicine Rezulin). What we want to know is -""""""""Does the variant PPARgamma gene help insulin more or less than the normal gene?"""""""" Therefore, we plan to compare 30 sets of 5 persons each. All 5 will be of the same sex, race, age and same degree of obesity, but one will have 2 copies of the variant gene, 2 will have 2 normal genes, and 2 will have 1 of each. We will perform detailed measurements to determine if fat is stored differently and if insulin works differently in people with the variant gene than in people of the same obesity with normal genes. We believe that such information will improve our understanding of diabetes, and ultimately lead to better treatments (perhaps from new medicine similar to Rezulin).
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