decoding

It's a new year, which means this blog is up and running once again. For those of you coming across this page for the first time, the same caveat as before holds true: this page is strange. Blogspot is meant to be a study aid, and the stuff that's on this page is Finnegan's Wake-esque as a result--random thoughts from sports, top 40 music, cheap DVDs, news headlines, and the like, jumbled together with the stuff I'm learning in school and on my own in preparation for the USMLE Step 1 examination coming up in June (i.e. the first of many official tests I need to pass to become a doctor). As well, please forgive any spelling/grammar/syntax mistakes. You know I'm normally anal about such things, but unlike my premeditated Xanga, this is all pure brainfart. So, without further ado...

NYTimes.com today posted a headline about a newly identified gene that confers risk unto individuals for developing type 2 diabetes (i.e. insulin-resistant diabetes). The finding is significant for several reasons, the foremost being that this gene appears to be found in more than a third of all people. Diabetes is a complex trait, meaning that a broad variety of genes and environmental influences work in concert to generate the diabetes illness in an individual. But the identification of a gene with a particularly strong association with diabetes is significant because type 2 diabetes can be well controlled with diet, exercise, and other lifestyle modifications. Moreover, discovery of this gene can not only spur the development of a useful diagnostic test for diabetes, but also a gene-directed therapy for diabetes. And, personally, the best part about this study is that the authors are one of the chief collaborative groups with my current embattled mentor. Why he wasn't a co-author of the study I don't know, however.