Dr Mohan’s Diabetes Specialities Centre launches ‘Precision Diabetes’

New Delhi: India’s leading diabetes experts, Dr Mohan’s Diabetes Specialties Centre (DMDSC) announced the launch of ‘Precision (Personalized) Diabetes Department’- paving the way for a revolutionary approach to managing diabetes. Always ahead of the curve, DMDSC would be the first center to introduce ‘Precision Diabetes’ in India. The department was inaugurated by Mr Bharat Joshi, Deputy High Commissioner at British Deputy High Commission, Chennai in the presence of Prof Colin Palmer, Chair of Pharmacogenomics at University of Dundee, Scotland.

The ‘Precision (personalized) Diabetes’ department has been launched to coincide with the launch of a major Indo-UK research collaboration on diabetes between the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation (MDRF), Chennai and the University of Dundee, Scotland. The INDO-UK collaborative project is under the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Global Health Research programme with Prof. Colin Palmer from University of Dundee as the lead from UK and Dr V Mohan and colleagues from MDRF as the lead from India.

At its core, precision is a model that proposes customized of health care with medical practices, testing, decisions and treatments tailored to the individual patient level. Diagnostic tests and therapies are selected not only on the basis of generic symptoms but also by the specific risk factor profile and health history obtained from genetic or clinical profiling.

Diabetes is a complex health condition where symptoms differ from person to person and so does the diagnosis. Present day refinements in technology and advancements in genomics and other fields has proved that there are at least 20 types of diabetes that exists. Applying these principles of ‘Precision Diabetes’ will make it possible to accurately classify a patient and determine the type of diabetes any individual is suffering from depending on which the treatment for the patient will be prescribed.

Speaking about the launch Dr V Mohan, Chairman & Chief Diabetologist, Dr Mohan’s Diabetes Specialities Centre said, “Precision Diabetes in the Indian context will be revolutionary. Indians are predisposed to diabetes and with a change in the profile of patients diagnosed each, we cannot adopt a one size fits all approach. At Dr. Mohan’s Diabetes Specialities Centre, we constantly try to innovate and provide the best diabetes care to our patients, launch of ‘Precision Diabetes’ is another step towards it. The Precision Diabetes (Personalized) Department has been established with the aim to promote the translation of basic science into patient treatments. We have found the genetic mutation /genetic cause for Neonatal Diabetes and Maturity Onset of Diabetes in Youth (MODY) in India as we are recognized by ICMR as Nodal Centre for genetic screening of monogenic diabetes. Many patients with these conditions who were wrongly diagnosed to have type 1 diabetes need lifelong insulin injections have been shifted to oral Sulphonylurea drug and are doing very well.  That is a dramatic achievement. This is one example of Precision Diabetes. We hope to achieve many such breakthroughs in diabetes through this department. We believe this approach will not only provide accurate and relevant treatment, but also have a huge impact on the cost of managing diabetes”

Adding to this, Prof Colin Palmer, Chair of Pharmacogenomics at University of Dundee said, “With increasing industrialization and westernization the number of individuals with diabetes are rapidly increasing. Thus, there is an urgent need for a large in-depth study of the specific causes and consequences of diabetes in India in order to identify different subtypes of diabetes that exist in India and understand how best to manage each subtype. This project will address that. It will also look at new ways of providing diabetes screening, using smartphone technology and retinal scans, which will provide valuable insights into how we can deliver more cost-effective and affordable diagnosis and treatment of diabetes. The project commands access to two of the most sophisticated shared electronic patient record for every individual with type 2 diabetes in the world: the Scottish Clinical Care Information- Diabetes Care (SCI-DC) and the Dr Mohan’s Specialities Diabetes Centre, together, amounting in total to over 650,000 patients with diabetes with continuous data spanning over 20 years. Working with Dr Mohan’s team, the project will also examine the potential for delivering next-generation telemedicine for diabetes screening in the rural communities of Tamil Nadu”.