ABSTRACT
Diabetes mellitus is rapidly becoming one of the world’s major public health problems, and there is every reason to believe that over the next decade the epidemic of type 2 diabetes will continue to escalate. Diabetes affects large numbers of people from a wide range of ethnic groups and at all social and economic levels throughout the world. A minority of patients suffer from type 1 diabetes which is caused by pancreatic beta-cell failure, however type 2 diabetes is far more common and is characterized by tissue resistance to insulin that cannot be overcome by beta-cell hypersecretion.
