The laboratory measurements for the diabetes mellitus are widely used in medical practice.The laboratory measurements should be accuracy and valuable for clinician.The "Recommendations for Laboratory Analysis in the Diagnosis and Management of Diabetes Mellitus"would be helpful for laboratorian and clinician in the diabetes care.

Various academic organizations, countries, and regions have established different concepts of metabolic syndrome, including the involvement of metabolic disorders, the threshold of its constituent elements,and the utility as a research or clinical tool, etc. Additionally, uncertainty of its pathogenesis, lack of uniform diagnosis definition, and some other factors lead to concept confusion and practical inconvenience of metabolic syndrome in public health prevention and in clinical diagnosis. Consensus and controversy of metabolic syndrome were both presented in recent years. Besides literature reviewing, further evidences are essential for appropriate understanding and distinguishing. The present article mainly introduces the new controversies concerning the concept of metabolic syndrome and the recent evidence of unifying trends in the diagnosis criteria of abdominal obesity in Asians.

There is a close relationship between visceral adipose tissue and metabolic syndrome. It is necessary to enhance the researches on the inaccordance between the adipocytes of various depots and to elucidate the distinct differences between visceral and subcutaneous adipocytes in terms of their receptors, adipokines and activity of enzymes.

The deficiency in islet ?-cell secretion and (or) the decrease in insulin sensitivity of target tissue are the important pathophysiological mechanisms of diabetes. The methods for the assessment and evaluation of ?-cell function can be divided into: pulsatile insulin secretion, glucose secretagogues, non-glucose secretagogues (phase, peak value and duration) and other secretions. While the suitable method was chosen for the evaluation of ?-cell function, the sensitivity and specificity of different methods in the natural history of diabetes and the objective of evaluation should be all taken into account.

Normally, pancreatic islet?-cell mass is regulated by?-cell replication, neogenesis, apoptosis and cell size.?-cell mass in diabetic patients is conspicuously less than that in normal persons. Decline of?-cell mass is mainly caused by increased?-cell apoptosis. The change of?-cell mass is clinically becoming more and more important in regard to the progression of diabetes mellitus.

Pharmacogenomics aims to identify the effects of genomie variants on drug efficacy and safety. This article summarized the progress of pharmacogenomic study on anti-diabetic drugs.

Several insulin resistance syndromes, such as severe insulin resistance syndrome caused by mutations of insulin receptor gene and lipodystrophy caused by mutations of lamin gene, have been characterized clinically. The gene mutations, pathogenesis and clinical features of these monogenie diseases were reviewed in this article.

Recently,basic and clinical researches have shown that blood glucose variability is an independent risk factor for diabetic complications.Thus,ideal control of blood glucose is not only to reach the HbA1Ctarget,but also to minimize blood glucose variability.Different glycemic parameters could be selectedaccording to different purpose of evaluation,in which the mean amplitude of glucose excursions(MAGE) and the standard deviation of blood glucose (SDBG) could be used as accurate and simple assessment parameters respectively.

ncreased. But it remains controversial how vaspin is correlated with insulin sensitivity. More studies based on large population are needed to identify the associ-ation between vaspin and insulin sensitivity.

Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) family not only plays a role in bone formation,but is also involved in metabolic disease such as obesity and diabetes.The molecular structure,signal pathways,roles of BMP in regulating glycolipid metabolism,current situation and prospects in related diseases are mainly discussed.