The FinnDiane Study

The main aim is to elucidate why one third of the patients develop diabetic nephropathy with subsequent risk of macrovascular disease and premature death. Understanding the interplay between the environment, genes and lifestyle may help identify people at risk and may help tailoring personalized preventative measures, and ultimately, to improve the quality of life of people with diabetes.

We have identified a number of environmental, life style and genetic risk factors associated with the risk of diabetic complications.

One particular interest is to understand the potential deleterious effect of the chronic exposure to bacterial compounds and an inflammatory gut to the kidney health. Another promising hypothesis is diabetes-induced hypoxia that can cause irreversible damage to tissues through a number of downstream effects. Major efforts are made to dissect the genetic landscape of diabetic complications by employing state-of-the-art methods such as genome-wide association studies, exome- and whole genome sequencing, and epigenetics. 

We have identified multiple genetic factors that affect the risk of diabetic kidney disease, diabetic retinopathy, cardiovascular disease and blood glucose balance. As one of the largest studies participating in an international collaboration including 19,406 individuals with type 1 diabetes, we identified 16 novel genetic factors, including a common missense variant of COL4A3 gene that reduced the risk of diabetic kidney disease. With the ongoing sequencing efforts, we aim to identify also rare genetic factors that may have a larger impact on the risk of diabetic complications on individual level.