This International Women's Day, we're celebrating the work of Claire Meek, a Professor of Chemical Pathology & Diabetes in Pregnancy at the University of Leicester, whose research focuses on advancing our understanding of diabetes in pregnancy and its management.
Results from Claire’s pivotal Dietary Intervention in Gestational Diabetes (DiGest) trial have just been announced. We spoke to Claire about the results and her journey into diabetes research.
Could you tell us a little about your journey into diabetes research?
I’ve always been really interested in diabetes as a condition, partly because I have a strong family history of diabetes, so it’s always been present in my life. While I was in medical training, I had the opportunity to do a PhD at the University of Cambridge and focused on nutrition in type 2 diabetes.
After that, I had two pregnancies affected by gestational diabetes myself. I realised there were no answers to the questions I had. That led me to think about the need for more research into gestational diabetes.
How has women’s health historically been neglected in research? How does your work contribute to addressing this?
Women’s health is not one single issue. Women have a really diverse and rich set of experiences in their lives. But diabetes diagnosis and management are largely based on evidence from men.
That has huge but quiet problems, so my work is trying to focus on problems that are of importance to women and is showing that getting the right answers will benefit everyone.
What motivates you to work on your research every day?
I can hardly believe I have the privilege to do the job that I do - giving my time, effort, and energy to make life better for people living with diabetes.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have a number of both small and large eureka moments during my career. I think they capture the really enjoyable and almost addictive thing about doing research.
Sometimes eureka moments can be disappointing. We did a study into pregnancy for women with type 1 diabetes. This was focused on understanding how the way insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas work and may change in pregnancy. The results were a bit disappointing, but it changed our direction and meant I could work towards better things in the long run.
Can you tell us what difference you’d like your research to make to the lives of women with diabetes?
I would really like my research to find ways to prevent gestational diabetes, better its management, and improve women’s long-term health after they’ve had it.
I want to dispel the myth that gestational diabetes is a ‘temporary’ condition, and that people only have it whilst they’re pregnant. There’s a tendency to view it as something that’s over after 8 or 10 weeks, but gestational diabetes is actually a window into a woman’s lifelong health.
This is because a woman’s future risk of type 2 diabetes is increased tenfold if they’ve had gestational diabetes, so we need to develop treatments which reduce this risk.
Another area we need to tackle is stigma because a diagnosis of gestational diabetes can cause a lot of anxiety, and women are often made to feel very guilty about it.
I’d also really like to understand how we can better support women with type 2 diabetes before, during, and after pregnancy.
Finally, a key area I’d like to address is health inequalities. We know that many women with type 1 diabetes have access to great tech to manage their sugars during pregnancy, but it’s much harder for women from disadvantaged backgrounds to access the same tech. To achieve this, we need to first be working with diverse groups of people in research.
How has Diabetes UK impacted your career?
When I was awarded the Harry Keen Fellowship, it was absolutely transformational. It provided five years of funding so I could concentrate on learning to be an excellent diabetes researcher, and it allowed me to run an exciting and novel project and grow as a person - and as a researcher.
What do you like to do in your free time?
I enjoy swimming a few times a week. I spend most of my free time looking after my two sons, and love walking, gardening, and being out in nature.
