A podcast about diabetes and genes
With Andrew Hattersley
and Maggie Shepherd
A podcast about diabetes and genes
With Andrew Hattersley
and Maggie Shepherd
The One in Six Billion podcast is aimed to inform about all aspects of genetics in diabetes but particularly concentrating on the unusual genetic forms of diabetes. We will try and bring all aspects of this with the patient’s voice being very important.
The 2 hosts are Professor Andrew Hattersley, and Professor Maggie Shepherd both from the University of Exeter. Please click their names to load more information.
They have both been involved in setting up the genetics of diabetes research and diagnostic service in Exeter, which now receives samples from all over the world. To date we have had samples from 111 different countries!
The podcasts listed below will be available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all other podcast platforms. Please subscribe to ensure that you are updated when a new episode arrives. They will be published fortnightly.
For each episode we are providing links to key information about the science, medicine and personnel involved in the podcast.
28 October 2025
In the final episode of the One in Six Billion podcast Andrew and Maggie reflect with producer Steve Chapman on the fun they have had making 51 podcasts with 70 guests in the past 2 years.
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14 October 2025
Rohini Bajekal describes how she had years of receiving inappropriate lifestyle advice before Glucokinase MODY was diagnosed. Dr Shivani Misra’s research has shown that failure to diagnose monogenic diabetes is even common in South Asians than in the white European population.
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30 September 2025
Sarah Richardson talks about her new exciting research on insulin producing beta-cells that are found as single cells or small clusters in the pancreas, rather than within islets. These extra-islet beta-cells make up a major part of the insulin producing capacity of the pancreas in young children and are particularly susceptible to immune attack in Type 1 diabetes. This important research explains why the loss of insulin producing cells in Type 1 diabetes is more severe in young children and informs future work on treating and preventing Type 1 diabetes.
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16 September 2025
Hannah Robinson was the first adult in the UK to be given the new immunotherapy drug Teplizumab, which aims to slow down the development of type 1 diabetes. Hannah had multiple pancreatic autoantibodies and hence is on the path to developing Type 1 diabetes (Series 4 Episode 3). Her consultant, Dr Nick Thomas, arranged 14 consecutive daily hospital visits for her to receive the drug through a drip.
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2 September 2025
Jerry Gore has always lived life on the edge; he had tackled some of the highest, and most inhospitable mountain climbs in the world before he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes aged 40. His Type 1 diabetes has not held him back and he has learnt how to live well with his Type 1 diabetes when climbing at extreme altitude and bitter cold. He helps people living with Type 1 diabetes throughout the world, especially in S E Asia as co-founder of Action4Diabetes (A4D). Rob Andrews is a national expert helping people with Type 1 diabetes to adapt their diabetes care so they can do any extreme activity including mountaineering, long distance swimming, and endurance cycling.
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19 August 2025
Chris Bright was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes aged 8 but this did not stop him having a very successful football career and playing international futsal for Wales. He describes the challenges he faced and how he over came them. He has established The Diabetes Football Community that supports football for everyone living with Type 1 diabetes. Dr Rob Andrews helps people with Type 1 diabetes compete in all sports at the highest level. He has set up the Exercise for Type 1 Diabetes (EXTOD) education program for patients and healthcare professionals.
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5 August 2025
When Hannah Robinson was diagnosed with gestational diabetes and found to have islet auto-antibodies she was recognised as being on the path to future Type 1 diabetes. With help from her diabetes consultant Dr Nick Thomas, she became the first adult in the UK to be given Teplizumab, a new treatment that delays the onset of Type 1 diabetes.
Listen & more information 22 July 2025
Dr Rachel Besser explains how new treatment options mean it is now important to identify children before they develop symptomatic Type 1 diabetes. Rachel is working to ensure testing for risk of Type 1 diabetes is done in the best way for children and their families.
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8 July 2025
Richard Oram explains how recent advances have meant we can now delay type 1 diabetes with immunotherapy. To do this we need to be able to identify people at very high risk of developing Type 1 diabetes. Richard thinks genetic analysis could play a part in this identification along with measuring islet autoantibodies.
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24 June 2025
Jennifer has Prader Willi syndrome; she and her mother Helen explain the lifelong impact this has had on all aspects of life. A major challenge is that Jennifer is continually hungry and so access to food needs to be always controlled.
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10 June 2025
Professor Maggie Shepherd reflects back on her career and how she made the massive steps from being a clinical nurse to becoming a nationally leading researcher and educator.
Listen & more information 27 May 2025
Andrew Hattersley describes how teamwork and mutual support has helped the Exeter diabetes research team expand and flourish over the past 30 years.
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13 May 2025
Grace Bervoets talks about living with cystic fibrosis and cystic fibrosis related-diabetes. Amanda Stride, who works as a diabetes consultant helping people with cystic fibrosis related-diabetes, explains the many challenges of this unusual type of diabetes.
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29 April 2025
Tom Staniford talks about living with the MDP syndrome, an ultra-rare genetic condition. MDP syndrome includes Mandibula hypoplasia, Deafness, and Progeroid features amongst its widespread manifestations. Tom developed Type 2 diabetes as a teenager because of a loss of fat under the skin (lipodystrophy) despite being very thin and active. Tom has used his communication and media skills to help other people with MDP syndrome get diagnosed and receive the right care.
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15 April 2025
Farah O'Regan talks about how her son who had Down syndrome and a severe congenital heart condition needing surgery diagnosed in pregnancy and then developed Type 1 diabetes on day 2 of life. In early childhood he was diagnosed with 2 more autoimmune conditions, coeliac disease and hypothyroidism. Researcher Matt Johnson explains his research which has established that Down syndrome directly results in very early-onset autoimmune diabetes.
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1 April 2025
Abby Gardener describes how she was diagnosed with Wolfram syndrome after developing both insulin-treated diabetes and diabetes insipidus (when the urine cannot be concentrated) and how this has impacted her life. Professor Tim Barrett talks about how, throughout his career, he has been researching and providing care for patients with Wolfram syndrome. He explains that it is now recognised that there are a range of features that can result from the genetic change (WFS1 spectrum disorder) and that not every patient will have all the severe changes previously described in Wolframs syndrome.
Listen & more information 18 March 2025
Cassi Connelly talks about her experience of having familial partial lipodystrophy characterised by a loss of fat and muscular appearance of her arms and legs. She had multiple medical problems including diabetes for decades before the diagnosis of familial partial lipodystrophy was finally confirmed by a genetic test. Her treatment is now better tailored to her needs.
Listen & more information 4 March 2025
Rebecca Goodman talks to Andrew and Maggie about what it is like to grow up with Bardet-Biedl syndrome. Features of Bardet-Biedl syndrome include extra fingers and toes, progressive blindness, kidney problems, obesity due to an uncontrolled appetite, insulin resistance and diabetes. Despite this long list of medical issues Rebecca lives independently and enjoys a full and fun life.
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18 February 2025
We talk to John Dennis, a data science researcher working in the University of Exeter. He used data from 1 million people with Type 2 diabetes to discover how the clinical characteristics of a patient alter the glucose lowering with different treatments. John’s 5 drug model, published in the Lancet in late February 2025, uses simple clinical information to identify, for the first time, the best glucose lowering treatment for a patient. The model selected best treatment lowers the glucose most, doubles the time before another medication is needed and reduces long term complications of diabetes.
Listen & more information 4 February 2025
Julie Reynolds describes how she gradually lost her hearing in her 30’s and developed diabetes in her 40’s. Diabetes and/or deafness also developed in her mother, her children and other maternal relatives. This led to a diagnosis of maternally inherited diabetes and deafness (MIDD) that results from a change in the mitochondrial DNA. Kash Patel explains the science behind the diabetes, the deafness and the maternal inheritance and why there is a lot of variation in the presence and severity of clinical features
Listen & more information 21 January 2025
Ru Kovvuri explains about her battle to get a diagnosis and support for her daughter who had multiple medical problems and learning difficulties because of a deletion of the HNF1B gene. Rhian Clissold discusses her research to improve the diagnosis of the HNF1B syndrome and recognise the associated learning difficulties seen with loss (deletion) but not the spelling mistakes (mutations) in the HNF1B gene.
Listen & more information 7 January 2025
Grant King talks about his diagnostic journey where his low birth weight, childhood kidney disease, diabetes, liver dysfunction and infertility were at 32 years finally recognised as all being due to a change in the HNF1Beta gene. Dr Coralie Bingham explains how her research during her PhD in Exeter led to HNF1Beta being established as the commonest cause of inherited kidney disease and all the key parts of the HNF1Beta syndrome being recognised.
Listen & more information 24 December 2024
Natalie Raphael was diagnosed as having glucokinase MODY at the end of her first pregnancy. In her second pregnancy she had a recently introduced blood test that showed her fetus had not inherited her change in the glucokinase gene so was at risk of growing large. As a result of this she was given long-acting insulin to lower her glucose. Alice Hughes is the researcher who did the key study that proved the new blood test was both practical and accurate in glucokinase pregnancy.
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19 December 2024
In this episode we talk to Gill Preston, who was active and slim, when she was diagnosed with gestational diabetes in pregnancy. Her raised fasting glucose did not come down with tablets or insulin. Luckily she met Andrew Hattersley in the clinic, who recognised she had glucokinase MODY. Gill Spyer, working during her PhD showed that in glucokinase pregnancy the size of the baby depended on whether they inherited the genetic change from the mother and was not altered by insulin treatment. When the baby had the mutation it would grow normally and no treatment of the mother was needed.
Listen & more information 27 November 2024
In this episode we talk to Andrew Lotery about how he was found to have a raised fasting glucose on an insurance medical. He was treated as Type 2 diabetes but he questioned this as he was young. slim and physically fit. A chance reading of a research funder’s newsletter led him to the Exeter team and a diagnosis of glucokinase MODY. Amanda Stride worked as a research registrar in Exeter. She showed that in glucokinase MODY the fasting glucose was raised from birth and remained stable and regulated throughout life with treatment not changing the blood glucose. Anna Steele showed in her PhD that patients with glucokinase MODY did not get complications affecting the eye or kidney even after 50 years of raised glucose. So in glucokinase MODY treatment with insulin or tablets is not needed and does not work; patients should be discharged and not followed up.
Listen & more information 12 November 2024
In this episode we talk to Janette and her daughter Alice who were both correctly diagnosed with HNF4A MODY having been initially told they had Type 1 diabetes. The diagnosis not only allowed them to stop insulin but also explained the mystery of two of Janette’s children that were born as large babies and collapsed soon after birth with low blood sugar. Andrew explains how it was discovered that babies that inherited the HNF4A genetic change were on average over 800g heavier and were at high risk of low blood glucose around birth.
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29 October 2024
Mary Lee was thought to have Type 1 diabetes for over 3 decades; she was finally diagnosed with HNF1A MODY and was able to stop her insulin injections and get excellent blood sugar control with a sulphonylurea tablet. We hear from Ewan Pearson how sulphonylurea tablets were found to be excellent glucose lowering treatment when Andrew’s clinical observations of his HNF1A MODY patients were followed up by Ewan with a clinical trial.
Listen & more information 15 October 2024
Kevin Colclough describes how the genetic testing in diabetes has improved over the 2 decades he has worked in the Exeter NHS diagnostic lab. His work means now over 60 types of single gene diabetes are looked for in one sequencing test. Bev Shields talks about how she developed the amazing MODY calculator that uses common clinical characteristics to work out how likely a person with diabetes is to have maturity onset diabetes of the young (MODY).
Listen & more information 1 October 2024
Mary Humphries tells how her son Dan was diagnosed with diabetes aged 16 and it was assumed he had type 1 diabetes and treated with insulin. On insulin he had terrible problems with low blood sugars frequently losing consciousness and not managing to concentrate at school or at home.
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17 September 2024
Dr Nick Thomas talks about Type 1 diabetes in the older adult. In an iconoclastic study he showed most cases of Type 1 diabetes occur in adults rather than children. In older adults it is very hard to recognise that it is Type 1 as 98-99% of people with diabetes have Type 2 diabetes. Adults with Type 1 diabetes have just as rapid a decline in their own insulin and need all the expert care offered to children.
Listen & more information 3 September 2024
Simon Goode was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes aged 28. He explains how it took 6 months of feeling unwell before it was realised that he had Type 1 diabetes instead. Exeter Professor, Angus Jones, has done research showing that mistakes in the diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes are common in the older adult and offers solutions to help doctors get the diagnosis right.
Listen & more information 20 August 2024
Dr Jean Claude Katte explains how in Sub Saharan Africa diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of Type 1 diabetes in children and young adults is so much harder than in Europe.
Listen & more information 6 August 2024
We hear from the Mendy Korer about the enormous challenges of living with a child who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes aged 11 months. Matt Johnson, a research fellow in Exeter talks about his important research understanding what makes the immune system destroy the insulin making beta-cells in very young children.
Listen & more information 23 July 2024
Professor Richard Oram had the innovative idea of turning complex analysis of the genetic changes into a single number that estimate the likelihood of developing Type 1 diabetes. He explains to Andrew and Maggie how this has helped diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes and is being used around the world in studies aiming to prevent or delay diabetes in children.
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9 July 2024
Professor Partha Kar has made sure the technical advances in measuring blood sugar are available to everyone living with Type 1 diabetes in the UK. Partha had to overcame massive hurdles to make sure the technology was not just available to a privileged few. He discusses with Maggie and Andrew his inspirational leadership style and philosophy that have helped him to move mountains in the NHS.
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25 June 2024
Jean Dudderidge and Jill Epton talk about what it has been like to live with Type 1 diabetes for over 50 years. They discuss the massive changes in how they have been able measure their blood sugar.
Listen & more information 11 June 2024
Moira Murphy and Mark McCarthy talk about how a unified UK team of scientists came to be world leaders in decoding the genetic susceptibility to Type 2 diabetes.
Listen & more information 28 May 2024
Tim Frayling and Rachel Freathy talk about how they found the “Fat gene” in 2007. The Exeter team, working with Oxford, discovered the first common genetic change that increased body weight and predisposed to obesity.
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14 May 2024
In this special episode, we hear from Professor Tim Frayling who was Andrew and Sian’s first PhD student in 1995. He rapidly became the head of the analysis for the genetic susceptibility for Type 2 diabetes. His leadership has made Exeter an international leader in polygenic trait genetics.
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30 April 2024
In this special episode, we hear from Professor Sian Ellard who, like Andrew and Maggie, started in Exeter in 1995. Sian set up the Exeter molecular genetics laboratory from scratch. Through Sian’s leadership, this laboratory became world leading for both research and NHS diagnostic testing.
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16 April 2024
In this episode, Maggie and Andrew talk to Imran Bashir about the difficult journey he and his family have been on since his daughter, Tania, was born without a pancreas. They also hear from star scientist Dr Elisa De Franco about the long and challenging scientific journey to solve the genetic mystery of why Tania’s pancreas did not develop.
Listen & more information 2 April 2024
In this episode, Maggie and Andrew talk to Dr Elisa De Franco, the Exeter based genetic scientist whose research has discovered more genetic causes of diabetes than anyone else in the world.
Listen & more information 19 March 2024
In this special episode Andrew Hattersley talks with co-presenter Maggie Shepherd to identify what led to her joining the Exeter team in 1995 and ending up becoming the leading nurse for monogenic diabetes with a role combining clinical care, research and education.
Listen & more information 5 March 2024
In this episode, Maggie and Andrew start by talking to Carsyn Underwood and her mums Karla and Donna about Carsyn’s diagnosis of neonatal diabetes and how she got the right treatment very early and had an the excellent outcome as a result. They go on to talk to Professor Tim McDonald, a top NHS laboratory scientist, who has been researching into how we can make sure everyone is diagnosed early by developing universal screening for neonatal diabetes in the first week of life.
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20 February 2024
In this episode, Maggie and Andrew talk to Dr Pam Bowman, the doctor scientist, whose research has greatly advanced our understanding of neonatal diabetes. Pam showed treatment with sulphonylurea tablets control the glucose excellently in the long term and she transformed our understanding of how thinking, and development are altered by the change in the potassium channel gene.
Listen & more information 6 February 2024
In this episode Maggie and Andrew talk to Dame Frances Ashcroft the remarkable scientist from Oxford who has dedicated her life to understanding the key role of potassium channel in insulin secretion by the pancreatic beta-cell. Her work was crucial both before and after the discovery in Exeter that genetic changes in this channel could result in neonatal diabetes.
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23 January 2024
In this episode, we hear from Laurie and Mike Jaffe from Chicago, USA. They spread the word about neonatal diabetes to over 100M people around the world by an inspirational media campaign focused on their daughter, Lilly and how the diagnosis and resulting treatment change transformed her life.
Listen & more information 9 January 2024
In this episode we hear from Agnes Graja and Helen John, two of the national team of Genetic Diabetes Nurses that spread the news about neonatal diabetes across the UK. They identified and improved treatment in insulin-treated adults who had been diagnosed with diabetes in the first 6 months of life.
Listen & more information 22 December 2023
In this special episode Maggie Shepherd talks with co-presenter Andrew Hattersley exploring what led to him ending up as a research scientist and diabetes consultant in Exeter in 1995. They go back into how he became a doctor and what took him into research including surprising revelations about a transformative time in Africa as an 18-year-old!
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12 December 2023
In this episode, we hear about how sulphonylurea tablets were discovered to be an unexpected, and remarkably effective, new treatment for neonatal diabetes. Maggie and Andrew talk to Professor Ewan Pearson, the doctor scientist, who worked with doctors around the world to prove how good this treatment was and how it worked.
Listen & more information 28 November 2023
The story of neonatal diabetes continues as we hear about the remarkable science that led to the genetic diagnosis and new treatment that transformed Jack’s life in episode 1. In this episode Maggie and Andrew talk to Professor Anna Gloyn, the scientist who discovered the gene that was usually altered when very young babies are diagnosed with neonatal diabetes.
Listen & more information 13 November 2023
In this episode Andrew and Maggie are joined by Emma Matthews. Emma talks about her son Jack who was diagnosed with diabetes when 2 weeks old. Jack’s life was transformed when a genetic cause was found for his diabetes.
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