Why does obesity cause diabetes? Indian scientists just found an explanation

In a major breakthrough, Indian scientists have zeroed in on key disease events triggering type 2 diabetes in obese people.


They say the novel findings open up avenues for drug development and therapy and could also help identify those susceptible to the disease affecting 64.5 million Indians.

With 9.8 million obese men and 20 million obese women (fifth and third rank respectively in the world in 2014), according to a study published in The Lancet journal, it is a double whammy for India.

Scientists at the CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (CSIR-IICB), in collaboration with clinicians from ILS Hospitals, Kolkata, and Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (IPGMER), Kolkata, analysed fat tissues (visceral adipose tissue or VAT) of obese people undergoing bariatric surgery.

“A lot of obese people are getting diabetes type 2 (insulin resistance diabetes). Even in rural India, obesity is increasing. We have discovered a novel mechanism in the pathway that leads to type 2 diabetes in obese people. This is perhaps the root cause of the pathway and opens up possibilities for development of new drugs based on the finding,” immunologist Dipyaman Ganguly of CSIR-IICB told

Published in August 2016 in the journal Diabetes, the study builds upon existing data on the links between obesity and diabetes.