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Received Nov 24, 2017; Revised Feb 3, 2018; Accepted Mar 13, 2018
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1. Introduction
Diabetes is a chronic metabolic malaise that affects and is forecast to affect many millions of people in the world [1]. It is a disease caused by insulin deficiency or loss of insulin action. In addition to genetic factors, certain lifestyles such as high dietary fat content and physical inactivity are risk factors for the development of diabetes [2]. It has outpaced many other diseases and is predicted to become one of the major health concerns in the future [3]. According to data cited by the World Health Organization, by 2014 incidence of diabetes had risen to 8.5% [3]. In Mexico, for example, 2017 figures show that over 15% of adults are diabetic, which is a very high incidence and concern [4]. As of now, diabetes is an incurable and incapacitating disease with a long and protracted progression. It is also a disease being diagnosed more often in younger patients [2].
In human diabetic patients where the condition has existed for some time, there are several comorbidities. It courses with macrovascular complications, leading to heart disease and stroke, and increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. In addition, microvascular complications lead to nephropathy, retinopathy, and neuropathy [1]. Little is known of the onset and early progression of the disease, except for familial cases, which are the minority, and the higher risk of diabetes type 2 for babies where mothers had hyperglycemia or diabetes [2, 5].
Diabetes mellitus is divided into basically two types: type 1 and type 2, a division that reflects the cause of the metabolic dysfunction. Diabetics type 1 have a reduction in insulin secretion, and as a consequence, blood glucose does not attain homeostatic levels after food ingestion and digestion. Physicians normally treat them by prescribing exogenous insulin injections on a regular basis. These diabetics represent around 10% of all diabetic patients, and in most cases, their condition is due to the death of pancreatic Langerhans islets ß-type cells, which normally secrete insulin to clear elevated glucose levels from the...