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©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Milestones in the history of diabetes mellitus: The main contributors
Marianna Karamanou, Gregory Tsoucalas, George Androutsos, Effie Poulakou-Rebelakou, Department of History of Medicine, Medical School, University of Athens, 11527 Athens, Greece
Athanase Protogerou, Department of Pathophysiology, “Laiko” Hospital, Medical School, University of Athens, 11527 Athens, Greece
Author contributions: All authors equally contributed to this paper with conception and design of the study, literature review and analysis, drafting and critical revision and editing, and final approval of the final version.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There is no conflict of interest associated with any of the senior author or other coauthors contributed their efforts in this manuscript.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Marianna Karamanou, MD, PhD, Department of History of Medicine, Medical School, University of Athens, Greece 4 str, Themidos, Kifissia, 11527 Athens, Greece. mkaramanou@med.uoa.gr
Telephone: +30-210-7461437 Fax: +30-210-8235710
Received: August 13, 2015
Peer-review started: August 13, 2015
First decision: September 17, 2015
Revised: December 5, 2015
Accepted: December 17, 2015
Article in press: December 18, 2015
Published online: January 10, 2016
Peer-review started: August 13, 2015
First decision: September 17, 2015
Revised: December 5, 2015
Accepted: December 17, 2015
Article in press: December 18, 2015
Published online: January 10, 2016
Core Tip
Core tip: Diabetes mellitus has been known since antiquity and despite therapeutic advances it still remains an incurable chronic disease. In our historical article, we attempt to provide the most important steps in the history of diabetes mellitus from antiquity till nowadays. The contribution of leading medical figures such as Aretaeus of Cappadocia, Thomas Willis, Claude Bernard, Oskar Minkowski, Joseph von Mering, Frederick Banting and Charles Best is mentioned, in an attempt to highlight the development of our current knowledge in diabetes mellitus.