diabetes

If effective strategies are not developed, more than 1.3 billion people will be living with diabetes by 2050, some 800 million more than today. This is according to the lead study in a set of papers published in The Lancet and The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology. In addition, 75% of these people will live in low- and middle-income countries, which is largely due to "structural racism and inequality", according to the editorial accompanying the studies.

Previous research has shown that coffee drinking is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, but most are short-term, observational studies - they describe associations without being able to determine cause and effect. Research published in BMJ Medicine uses another method (Mendelian randomisation) to study potential causal relationships between caffeine levels in plasma and cardiovascular health, using genetic variants in nearly 10,000 people who participated in long-term studies. Higher genetically-predicted caffeine concentrations in plasma were associated with lower body-mass index and fat mass and a lower risk of type 2 diabetes. In addition, the research shows that 43% of the protective effect of caffeine on the risk of type 2 diabetes was influenced by a reduction in body mass index.