The EarlyBird study at the Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth has been running since 2001 and is the only project of its kind worldwide to take annual blood tests from healthy children, starting at age five, to identify links between weight and metabolic changes.
For the past six years it has monitored 300 children using six-monthly health checks in a bid to discover what causes changes that lead to Type 2 diabetes. Findings include the fact that girls are at greater risk of developing obesity-related diabetes than boys.
Dr Linda Voss, study co-ordinator, said the research team had managed to raise 1.2m over the past six years, but a further 1m is needed to see the project through.
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