ABSTRACT
Diabetes, often referred to by doctors as ‘diabetes mellitus’, describes a group of metabolic diseases in which the person has high blood glucose levels, either because insulin production is inadequate, or because the body’s cells do not respond properly to insulin, or both. Patients with high blood sugar will typically experience frequent urination; they will also become increasingly thirsty and hungry. The term ‘biomarker’ refers to a naturally occurring molecule, gene or characteristic or some pharmacologic response to a therapeutic intervention, by which a particular pathological or physiological process or disease can be identified. It is a broad subcategory of medical signs/signals that are objective indications of medical state observed from outside the patient, which can be measured accurately. For the purpose of predicting diabetes, a biomarker should be present in a subset of the population, and this subset be in the majority in the proportion of people in whom this disease develops. A biomarker should also present a quantifiable risk for the development of diabetes within a defined period in the progression to clinical or symptomatic diabetes.
