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Science / Medicine : Progress Seen in Diabetes Study

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From Times Staff and Wire Reports

Researchers in Illinois and Michigan are one step closer to finding a gene that predisposes individuals to non-insulin-dependent diabetes, the form of the disease that generally strikes older people and affects as many as 11 million Americans.

Molecular biologist Graeme Bell of the University of Chicago Medical Center, endocrinologist Stefan Fajans of the University of Michigan and their colleagues studied more than 275 members of a family, spanning five generations, in which 40 people had diabetes.

They reported last week in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences that the 40 diabetics all had the same unique segment of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid, the genetic blueprint of life) on their Chromosome 20. The gene that causes the disorder is located somewhere in that segment, they said.

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