GPx2 was significantly down-regulated among chronic hepatitis C patients with pre-DM and DM. 
 Down-regulation of GPx2 concomitant with decreased glucose uptake and markedly increased gluconeogenesis were observed in HCV replicon cell line. Down-regulation of GPx2 by GPx2 siRNA reduced hepatic glucose uptake and increased hepatic gluconeogenesis in cell line without HCV replicon.
 Hepatic GPx2 was down-regulated in high-fat diet mice with abnormal glucose metabolism. In high fat diet mice, early introduction of GPx2 overexpression could prevent the increase of hepatic gluconeogenesis and blood sugar. In high-fat diet mice with overt T2DM pictures, we successfully reversed the abnormal glucose metabolism by introduction of GPx2 overexpression plasmid. Restoration or overexpression of hepatic GPx2 could improve the high fat diet-induced glucose metabolic disorders. 
GPx2 will be a target for prevention and therapy of T2DM.

Either hepatitis C virus infection or a high-fat diet will cause a decrease in the expression of GPx2, to decrease in glucose uptake capacity of hepatocytes and to increase in gluconeogenesis in hepatocytes, which causes an increase in blood glucose level leading to diabetes. Taking advantage of a genetic network analysis software, it is finding that GPx2 is closely related to fatty acid oxidation, glucose tolerance, glucose uptake, and gluconeogenic genes. Since hepatic insulin resistance and an increase in hepatic gluconeogenesis are important pathogenic mechanisms of type II diabetes, the present invention uses the expression of liver GPx2 as a new target for preventing and treating diabetes without causing side effects of hypoglycemia.

The present invention is related to a method for detecting carbohydrate metabolism disorder by using glutathione peroxidase 2 (GPx2), and an application for use in the field of preventing and treating type II diabetes.
The method of the present invention is particularly suitable for high-risk groups of type II diabetes, such as overweight people, activity-averse people, family factors (one of parents or siblings are type II diabetes patients), ethnic factors, and ageing people (especially those who are over forty-five year old), people having pre-diabetes (pre-diabetes is blood glucose value in the body is higher than healthy, but insufficient to be classified as type II diabetes, if not controlled, it will develop into Type II diabetes), or those who have had gestational diabetes.