The Department of Metabolism integrates endocrinology and diabetes researches in epidemiology, genomics and cytology, and clinical services, and collaborates Department of Nuclear Medicine, Department of Radiology, Department of Endocrinology (Specialist Ward and Intensive Care Unit), Critical Care Center, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Preventive Medicine Center, International Metabolic Medical Center, Molecular and Genome Epidemiology Research Center and Chinese Medicine in clinical services. In terms of the remote medicine for diabetes, the Department provides appropriate diagnosis and treatment for metabolic patients through the primary cares and inter-hospital cooperation, and reaches excellent medical and research achievements. At present, it operates the out-patient clinic for about 7,400 diabetes patients a month. It has reached a number of performance indicators as outstanding as those of excellent diabetes centers, such as the nephropathy screening rate and early nephropathy treatment, the early detection of peripheral vascular diseases and early prevention and treatment of retina, the introduction of routine computer-assisted health education, and so on.
The Department won 5 national thesis awards. Recently, it has published more than 30 papers and 41 conference papers. It cooperated with Academia Sinica to research and find the type 2 diabetes susceptibility gene of Chinese is located near the chromosome 9, the protein tyrosine phosphatase receptor type D (PTPRD), and the chromosome 17, serine racemase (SRR), leading the world. In terms of pharmacological research, it discovered that the SNPs of type 2 diabetes, in the intron 4 of PRKD1 (rs57803087), was strongly correlated with DPP-4 inhibitor. This is a new discovery in the pharmacokinetic researches in Taiwan diabetic population for the treatments of DPP-4 inhibitor on diabetes in pharmacogenomics. In terms of genomics, it discovered the KCNQ1 gene mutations are associated with hypertension in patients with type 2 diabetes. Patients with genetic mutations have different risks of hypertension. It shall be the new opportunities for prevention and treatment.