Greater than 30 million people have diabetes. Over time diabetic patients need more and more medications and develop numerous medical complications. Remission of Type 2 Diabetes (T2DM) would have profound effects on people with diabetes with respect to overall health improvement (insulin sensitivity(Si), cardiovascular risk factors(CVR), inflammation markers (IC)), reduction of retinopathy, nephropathy, neuropathy and reduction in medical costs. Methods to accomplish this have not yet been determined, however, it is generally accepted that non-drug methods to treat T2DM is the most cost effective and have the fewest side effects. The primary risk factor for T2DM is obesity. Our randomized clinical trials comparing the effects of High Protein (HP) vs High Carbohydrate (HC) weight loss diets in obese, prediabetic(IGT) women and men where all foods were provided daily for 6 months(mo) showed that while both diet groups had similar weight loss, 100% of HP diet subjects had remission from IGT to Normal Glucose Tolerance(NGT), but only 33% of HC diet group had remission. Also, the HP diet provided greater improvement in Si, CVR, IC, and an increase in % lean body mass (LBM) compared to the HC diet demonstrating that weight loss is not the only factor involved in remission. Based on these findings, we now propose to investigate effects of HP and HC weight loss diets in Newly Diagnosed T2DM (NT2DM) women and men for 6 mo. Our long term goal is to establish a weight loss diet plan for remission of NT2DM which would be adaptable for use in physicians' clinics and metabolomics predictors for assess-ment of remission. The overall objective of this study is to determine if remission of NT2DM can be induced by dietary manipulation using a HP diet and the pathobiology of this remission. We hypothesize that NT2DM subjects will have remission to NGT on the HP diet when they are provided the food and daily menus for compliance. The rationale is the HP diet is palatable for subjects to continue after the 6 mo study and stay in remission using diet plans we provide. We will compare the effects of the HP vs HC diet on remission. Specific aims of this study are to determine the effects of the HP and HC diets on NT2DM obese subjects in a 6 mo feeding study and determine: (a)remission of NT2DM to NGT, (b)weight loss and LBM preservation, (c)improvements in metabolic markers, CVRs, IC, epigenetic DNA methylation changes and pathways involved with remission and metabolomic markers to establish predictive markers of remission of NT2DM. This study is innovative in that we propose to use a non-pharmaceutical means (HP diet) for remission of T2DM diabetes and weight loss and determine the pathobiology involved in improvement in metabolic and CVRs by interrogating the samples with emerging technologies. The proposed research is significant because if we can demonstrate the HP diet cause remission of NT2DM to NGT along with other metabolic improvements, it would be a significant improvement in health risk and medical cost to subjects
