Changes in the bacteria that live in your gut could flag type 2 diabetes risk years before a standard blood test does.
That is the message from a large new analysis presented at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes annual meeting in Milan.
Researchers pooled genetic readings from the gut microbes of 229,025 adults in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Scientists at the University of Trento in Italy led the work with UK collaborators. They compared people with type 2 diabetes, prediabetes and normal blood sugar, writes News-Medical.
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What the analysis actually found
The team identified 789 gut bacterial species that behaved differently in people with type 2 diabetes. Of those, 168 were more common in people with the disease. The other 621 were less common.
Around three quarters of the same bacteria also turned up in people with untreated prediabetes, the stage where blood sugar is elevated but has not yet crossed the diabetes threshold.
That overlap is what makes the authors see the pattern as a possible early warning.
One example, Enterocloster bolteae, was more abundant in people with diabetes and has been tied to heart and metabolic problems.
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Another, Romboutsia timonensis, was less common in the same group. Many of the flagged species had never been described in the lab and only surfaced because the group was so large.
What the researchers say it could mean
The latest findings could mark an important advance in understanding the direct relationship between the gut microbiome and metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, according to Professor Tim Spector, scientific co-founder of health science company ZOE, which supplied the cohort data.
Dr. Gabriel Baldanzi of the Laboratory of Computational Metagenomics said lifestyle changes, including improvements to diet and physical activity, are already known to help prevent or delay the development of type 2 diabetes.
However, it can be difficult for people to see whether those changes are having an effect beyond visible signs such as weight loss.
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Baldanzi suggested that gut microbiome testing could eventually offer another way to measure whether healthier habits are producing beneficial changes inside the body.
The researchers stressed that microbiome testing is not intended to replace existing clinical methods.
Instead, it could potentially complement established diagnostic measures such as HbA1c and fasting glucose, alongside recognised risk factors including age, sex, body weight and family history.
How preliminary this is
The results were shared at a conference and have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
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Conference abstracts are early-stage science and can shift as the data are reviewed. There is also no commercial screening test built on this bacterial signature that a family doctor can order today.
The context helps explain why the interest is so high. In the United States, 40.1 million people are living with diabetes, according to the CDC. More than 1 in 4 adults with the disease do not know they have it.
Around 115.2 million American adults, more than 2 in 5, have prediabetes. About 8 in 10 of them are unaware.
For anyone worried about their own risk, the standard path has not changed. A conversation with a primary care doctor and a fasting blood sugar or HbA1c check remain the way diabetes risk is measured in the clinic today.
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This article is made and published by Ida-Marie Palm Varbæk, who may have used AI in the preparation.