Introduction
TYPE 2 DIABETES, DISEASES
In 1999, F. S. Collins, the then leader of the Human Genome Project, announced a genetic revolution in medicine, fundamentally changing the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of multiple diseases [Tremendous amounts of knowledge with respect to genetics and other biomarkers have been assembled since then, more recently also in diabetology. Indeed, and as emphasised by J. M. Dennis [A prerequisite for precision medicine is that there is treatment heterogeneity, i.e. that a treated person responds differently to different treatments. From a methodological point of view, this assumption proclaims an interaction between treatment and person. However, it is largely unknown that this interaction cannot be observed directly from a standard RCT, where only an average treatment effect can be observed. Instead, repeated-crossover or It is also often overlooked that another prerequisite is necessary for making precision medicine clinically useful [We are not aware of any previous work that attempted to assess the potential of precision medicine in diabetology by checking these two prerequisites of treatment heterogeneity and available predictors. Recently, such methods have been proposed and used in other disciplines, e.g. in psychiatry [Results of two fictitious but realistic randomised trials that compare a placebo to a verum treatment. Given are 200 individual HbATo assess whether treatment of type 2 diabetes is amenable to the precision medicine approach, we report here on a meta-regression analysis of randomised, placebo-controlled trials aimed at treatment of type 2 diabetes with respect to the variability of HbA