WMS to research diabetes in Malawi

To mark World Diabetes Day, Warwick Medical School (WMS) has announced one of its latest research projects: to concentrate on the study of diabetes among pregnant women in Malawi.

WMS has been heavily involved in diabetes research for approximately ten years and is well known in the UK for its outstanding educational and research programmes regarding the disorder.

It has been recently discovered that pregnant women in Malawi who are HIV-positive may be at a higher risk of developing diabetes as a result of taking special medication that is to prevent their unborn children from contracting HIV from them.

Dr Paul O’Hare from the Warwick Medical School who is leading the project said: “One in every four pregnant women in Malawi has HIV. The drugs they take to prevent their babies being born with HIV may, we believe, give them an added side effect of increasing their risk of developing diabetes.”

A team of researchers and clinical academics, including Dr O’Hare, has already left for Malawi on 11 November to embark on the study.

Kate Cox, Warwick Medical School’s Communications Officer, told the _Boar_ that the main goal of the study is “to find out whether the increasing rate of diabetes can be stemmed”.

The study will begin by investigating and documenting the findings derived from more than 1,000 births. This will hopefully give the researchers a possibility to establish the exact causes of increased rate of diabetes amongst pregnant women in Malawi.

The Warwick Medical School’s research on diabetes in Malawi may prove to be a milestone in the study of diabetes around the world.

It is hoped that this new project, which is estimated to take around four months just to collect the relevant data, will provide PhD students with the opportunity to participate and gain new experience.