Type 2 diabetes

Type 2 diabetes is a chronic metabolic disorder characterized by hyperglycemia, resulting from defects in insulin secretion, insulin action, or both. It primarily affects the pancreas, liver, muscle, and adipose tissue, leading to impaired glucose homeostasis (Ahlqvist E et al. (2018)). Common signs and symptoms include polyuria, polydipsia, polyphagia, fatigue, blurred vision, slow-healing wounds, and recurrent infections. However, many individuals with type 2 diabetes may be asymptomatic in the early stages (American Diabetes Association. (2021)).

Risk factors include obesity, physical inactivity, age (>45 years), family history of diabetes, ethnicity (higher risk in African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and Asian Americans), history of gestational diabetes, and presence of prediabetes (Zheng Y et al. (2018)). Type 2 diabetes is the most common form of diabetes, accounting for 90-95% of all cases worldwide. Its prevalence has been rising rapidly, with an estimated 462 million individuals affected globally in 2019 (Khan MAB et al. (2020)). Subtypes include classical type 2 diabetes, latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (LADA), and maturity-onset diabetes of the young (MODY) (Ahlqvist E et al. (2018)). Clinical markers used for diagnosis and monitoring include fasting plasma glucose, oral glucose tolerance test, HbA1c, and in some cases, C-peptide and autoantibody testing (American Diabetes Association. (2021)).

Differential Abundance Analysis Results

This section presents the results of the differential protein abundance analysis, visualized through a volcano plot and summarized in the accompanying table for all three comparisons: 1) disease vs. healthy samples, 2) disease vs. diseases from the same class, and 3) disease vs. all other diseases.