ABSTRACT
Diabetes mellitus (DM) is one of the most important diseases of the 21st century, raising serious social-economical concerns. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), DM is labelled as a chronic, metabolic disease characterized by hyperglycemia and affects more than 422 million people worldwide, with rates continuously increasing each year and the majority of the affected belonging to low- to middle-income countries (WHO 2023). Knowing DM to be a leading cause of cardiovascular diseases, renal failure, and blindness, it is no surprise that high mortality rates are also associated with this disease (Zhang et al. 2021). In fad, WHO reports that an estimated 1.5 million deaths per year are directly linked to DM and predicts that DM will be the seventh primary cause of death in the world by 2030 (Mathers and Loncar 2006, WHO 2023). Because of the health constraints introduced by DM in the affected people, namely impaired immune response and high microbial counts, alterations in the human microbiome occur, which becomes compromised and aggravates the disease (Zhang et al. 2021).
