Joint research with Auckland Uni to study role of genes in these diseases - The Straits Times 14 Jan 2008

The traditional confinement diet Chinese mothers follow in the first month after childbirth might hold a key to lowering their babies' risk of diabetes later in life.

Indians, for instance, are two to three times more likely than Chinese to contract Type II diabetes, and Asians on the whole are about twice as likely as Caucasians to get it.

A new research programme on diabetes and obesity here hopes to answer questions about the incidence of this obesity-linked condition in Asia.

The programme is a partnership between the Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences (SICS) and New Zealand's University of Auckland's Liggins Institute.

The SICS, a new institute under Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research, is part of Singapore's push to translate research findings into actual cures for patients.

The research into diabetes and obesity aims to find out how genes and a foetus' development play a part in metabolic and cardiovascular diseases in Asians later in life.

Metabolic diseases like diabetes and obesity result when the body's system of converting food into energy breaks down, while cardiovascular diseases hit the heart or blood vessels.

Type II diabetes, the most common form of diabetes, occurs when the body produces insufficient insulin to convert glucose from food into energy.

Diabetes was the seventh principal cause of death here in 2006.

Programme director and Liggins Institute director Peter Gluckman told The Straits Times in an interview yesterday that a growing number of younger people - some not even fat - are contracting it.

'You may be thin on the outside, but there may be a lot of fat inside you which makes you susceptible to diabetes,' said the 58-year-old, who will spend about a third of his time on the programme here.

His speciality is in how, during a foetus' development, the genes predisposing it to future diseases can be switched on or off.

This expertise, and Prof Gluckman's contacts, are what the programme wants to tap, said SICS executive director Judith Swain, 59.

She added at the same interview that Singapore was an excellent place to study genetic differences in diseases because it had at least three major ethnic groups here.

Under the partnership, scientists from the New Zealand research institute will come to Singapore to work on projects; one will resign from Liggins to join the Singapore programme full-time in March.

More researchers here are also expected to be recruited for the programme, which is the SICS' first research project.