Researchers Looking At Hispanics To Find Diabetes Cause
Inside a small motor home, Joanne Pierluissi raised her sleeve as nurse Mary Perez inserted a needle into the vein above her forearm, drawing blood into a tube for a diabetes test. As her daughters watched, Pierluissi, 24, said it was for them, as much as for herself, that she agreed to be tested for the deadly killer of Hispanics. Twelve million Americans have some form of diabetes, but it most prevalent among minorities, especially Native Americans, blacks and Hispanics. Hispanics are three times as likely to develop diabetes as the general population, and 40 percent of the 700,000 victims in Texas are Mexican-American. More than 150,000 Americans die from diabetes each year; another 150,000 deaths are diabetes-related, according to the American Diabetes Association. No one really knows what sparks it, but researchers believe Hispanics could hold the key. San Antonio, the nation's ninth largest city, with a population that is 50 percent Hispanic, is becoming the base for diabetes studies. San Antonio's Hispanic makeup led Dr. Ralph DeFronzo to abandon his prestigious position as a Yale University diabetes researcher and persuade his four-member team to relocate to the University of Texas Health Science Center. Epidemiologist Dr. Michael Stern has devoted 10 years to studying Hispanic diabetes and led the grassroots study of the most common form, which develops mostly in obese adults over 40 who may have a family history of the disease. Stern said family studies of diabetic patients are brining him closer to finding the gene that triggers the disease, and to a screening test. Researchers believe that poor Hispanics' diets of cheap, processed foods, lack of exercise and infrequent medical attention _ either due to poverty or a cultural bias against doctors _ increases their risk of acquiring diabetes. Educating elementary-school-age children about healthy diets would help reduce the number of diabetes cases, DeFronzo said. ``If you have a 65-year-old mother who weighs 220 pounds and you tell her to go out and jog five miles Monday, Wednesday and Friday, she is going to laugh at you.''
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