World Diabetes Day: Exeter researcher recruits trial participants

A Diabetes expert is recruiting hundreds of people with a recent diagnosis of the disease to an ongoing clinical trial.

This World Diabetes Day, Dr Angus Jones is looking for people who were diagnosed with diabetes in the last year to participate in a clinical trial, with the long-term aim of improving diagnostic accuracy.

World Diabetes Day is organised by the International Diabetes Federation, and aims to bring attention to important issues in the Diabetes community. An estimated 4.5 million people are living with Diabetes in the UK alone.

Dr Jones’ research currently focuses on the development of “clinical calculators”. These are simple websites or smartphone apps which aim to predict the most accurate diagnosis. These calculators work by combining different features, such as age of diagnosis, BMI and levels of certain self-antibodies in the blood, to give an accurate probability of whether a person has Type 1 or Type 2 Diabetes.

Clinical calculators would be used by doctors and patients to determine whether any additional tests are needed, and to decide the best initial treatment.

The study will follow participants for three years following their diagnosis, to see whether the calculator has correctly predicted the type of Diabetes they have.

Dr Jones said: “It’s not clear for many people which type of Diabetes they have when they’re first diagnosed. Since Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes are managed completely differently, this can lead to patients receiving the wrong treatment or advice for their condition. The end goal of our research is to develop a tool which can accurately predict the type of Diabetes.”

The study has been funded by Diabetes UK and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), and is running in 60 centres across the UK. Dr Jones’ team is aiming to recruit 2000 participants. Anyone aged 18 or over and diagnosed with diabetes in the last year can sign up.

If you’re interested in taking part in the study, please contact the Exeter Clinical Research Facility by emailing crf@exeter.ac.uk or calling 01392 408182.