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Other factors also play a role in the development of diabetes. Professors
Hales and Barker showed that in England the frequency of IGT and diabetes
(DM) in older men is inversely proportional to their birth weight. They
proposed that environmental factors acting in utero or early life
determine the risk for development of diabetes in later life. They
postulated that individuals with low birth weight, who were undernourished
during foetal life, have disturbances in insulin secretion or in metabolic
programming that lead to metabolic disturbances and other features of
insulin resistance syndrome, and/or diabetes in later years.
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