Biomedicine. New insights into type 2 diabetes.

Researchers studying type 2 diabetes are optimistic that they are closing in on the elusive causes of the world's most prevalent metabolic disorder--although no one is willing to bet the bank on it. Using both biochemical and genetic approaches, diabetes researchers have identified multiple intracellular signaling pathways that appear to lie at the heart of this condition, which affects some 250 million people worldwide and is the leading cause of blindness, kidney failure, and amputation among adults. And in the process, they have thrown out much of the dogma of the past 10 years.