Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay have looked at hidden blood markers to determine diabetes risk, which could lead to earlier detection and more customized treatments.

India is commonly referred to as the diabetes capital of the world, with an estimated 101 million people living with diabetes and an additional 136 million at risk for prediabetes.

Current diagnostics, such as HbA1c and fasting blood glucose, only partially capture the complex metabolic imbalances that underlie the disease, and they may not always be able to identify the most at-risk individuals.

The IIT Bombay team used metabolomics, the study of small chemicals in the blood, to find biological trends and identify individuals at risk for diabetes.

The body contains small chemicals called metabolites, which are a reflection of the continuous activity in cells. They can be analyzed to find hidden changes in body chemistry that occur before clinical symptoms appear.

“High blood sugar is not the only symptom of type 2 diabetes. It interferes with the body’s processes for lipids, amino acids, and other substances. This hidden activity, which frequently starts years before the onset of clinical symptoms, is frequently missed by standard examinations, according to Sneha Rana, an IIT B doctorate scholar.

The scientists obtained whole blood samples from 52 volunteers at Osmania General Hospital in Hyderabad between June 2021 and July 2022 for the study, which was published in the Journal of Proteome Research.

There were 14 patients with diabetic kidney disease (DKD), 23 individuals with type 2 diabetes, and 15 healthy controls among the participants. The team searched for around 300 metabolites using two complimentary methods: gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS).

They discovered that diabetic patients and healthy controls had different levels of 26 metabolites.

Some, like cholesterol, glucose, and 1,5-anhydroglucitol (a short-term indicator of blood sugar), were anticipated. However, several, such as fructosyl-pyroglutamate, ribothymidine, and valerobetaine, have not previously been connected to diabetes.

According to varsity professor Pramod Wangikar, “this suggests that diabetes is a much broader metabolic disorder beyond just glucose dysregulation.”

The group discovered that biochemical patterns may also be used to identify diabetic patients who are susceptible to renal problems.

The scientists discovered seven metabolites that gradually rose from healthy to diabetic kidney disease patients when comparing kidney disease patients to the other groups.

Among these were sugar alcohols such as myo-inositol and arabitol, ribothymidine, and 2PY, a substance that resembles a toxin and builds up when kidney damage occurs.