Diabetes is amongst the most common long term conditions, with the number of people affected worldwide quadrupling from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014. Its prevalence in people over 18 years of age has risen from 4.7% in 1980 to a staggering 8.5% in 2014. In 2012, there were 1.5 million deaths as a direct result of diabetes, making it the 8th leading cause of death amongst both sexes, and the 5th leading cause of death amongst women. There were a further 2.2 million deaths as a result of complications due to higher-than-optimal glucose levels. In 2013, 6% of the UK adult population (2.7 million people) were diabetic, 90% of whom had type 2 diabetes. A further 5 million people were estimated to be at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes. This has led to a cost of £8 billion per year to the NHS, 80% of which is due to diabetes-related complications such as cardiovascular disease, amputations, renal failure and sight loss.

The standard treatment protocol for pre-diabetic individuals in the UK is a brief consultation with their clinician highlighting the dangers of an increased risk of diabetes, and some general information regarding healthy eating and the benefits of regular physical activity. The individual will subsequently be contacted every 3 years to assess the state of their glucose regulation. Despite the implementation of this system, incidence rates of diabetes have continued to rise over the years. From 1994-2011, the number of women diagnosed with diabetes has risen from 1.9 - 4.9%, and 2.9 - 7.0% for men. In response to this, the NHS launched the NHS Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) in 2016. The aforementioned studies and the predictions of the DPP are in agreement that an intensive lifestyle intervention can radically reduce incidence rates of diabetes. However, these interventions are costly, labour-intensive and require the health system to pre-identify pre-diabetic patients. The latter is one of the greatest challenges to any diabetes prevention program, as many at-risk individuals will not self-assess to pre-empt a glucose regulation test.

The investigator's solution aims to assess the improvement in glucose regulation by following a DNA-based diet in comparison with the standard protocol. The DNA-based diet will be devised based on metabolism-based genotypic traits of the participant. The traits cover metabolic imbalances such as carbohydrate sensitivity and fat sensitivity. This nutrigenetic information will be supplied to the user in an easy to use electronic format to provide food recommendations on demand during grocery shopping e.g. via the DnaNudge App or other visual indicator.

If effective, this solution could provide a cost-effective, widely-distributed, easily scalable prevention tool for improving glucose regulation in high risk individuals. Moreover, the non-invasive nature of the intervention, paired with the autonomy that it provides the individual in choosing their food choices, enables it to be a low-risk intervention. Furthermore, as a DNA-based diet is relevant for the general public, it has the potential to perform the preventative measures on individuals who do not self-identify as pre-diabetic.