TFRC and type 2 diabetes mellitus: Jiang et al. [57] followed 32,826 healthy women for 10 years in a prospective case-control study and showed that increased iron stores at the baseline (higher ferritin levels and a lower transferrin receptor to ferritin ratio) is an independent risk factor for T2D development [57], an observation consistent with the increased T2D prevalence found in cohorts of hemochromatosis and thalassemia patients [58].