Welcome to the Diabetic Foot Consortium

The Diabetic Foot Consortium (DFC), supported by the National Institutes of Health is the first-ever multicenter network to study diabetic foot ulcers, a common and burdensome complication of diabetes and the leading cause of lower limb amputations in the United States. The DFC aims to lay the foundation for a clinical trial network to test how to improve diabetic wound healing and prevent amputations among the 27 million American adults with diabetes. The DFC is supported by the NIH’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). Up to 34% of people with diabetes will develop a foot ulcer in their lifetime and half of foot ulcers become infected. Each year about 100,000 Americans with diabetes will lose part of their lower limb because a foot ulcer becomes infected or does not heal.

Our current study is a platform study designed to efficiently test multiple biomarkers to identify diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs), led by University of Michigan. This study is designed to be flexible so that is suitable for a wide range of studies relevant to individuals with open (active) DFUs. Our previous studies of which manuscripts are currently being written, focused on finding biological clues, called biomarkers, in people with diabetic foot ulcers that can guide treatment and predict how the ulcer will heal and the likelihood of an ulcer returning.

The first study of the DFC, led by Indiana University School of Medicine, tested whether body fluid leaking through the skin on a newly healed ulcer can predict how likely an ulcer might return. The second study, led by the University of Miami, tested whether the presence of or a change in specific cellular proteins in tissue samples from an ulcer can predict the likelihood of healing in the next 12 weeks.

The NIDDK, a component of the NIH, conducts and supports research on diabetes and other endocrine and metabolic diseases; digestive diseases, nutrition, and obesity; and kidney, urologic and hematologic diseases. Spanning the full spectrum of medicine and afflicting people of all ages and ethnic groups, these diseases encompass some of the most common, severe, and disabling conditions affecting Americans. For more information about the NIDDK, the NIH and SABER visithttp://www.niddk.nih.gov,https://www.nih.govandhttps://sph.umich.edu/saber/.

New NIH and NIDDK Funding Opportunity for New and Early Investigators. Please seeResearcherstab for more information