Congress President Prof. Michael Roden welcomes attendees to CEDA.
For three days, Düsseldorf took centre stage in the European diabetes community: from 25 to 27 June 2026, the Congress of the Central European Diabetes Association (CEDA) took place at the German Diabetes Centre (DDZ), an affiliated institute of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU). Around 250 participants exchanged views on the latest research findings and new approaches to diabetes care. A total of 16 sessions, 56 poster presentations and four industry symposia from 25 countries clearly demonstrated that diabetology is increasingly focusing on the individual patient.
Not all cases of diabetes are the same. Behind the diagnosis lie various forms of the condition, each with different risks of complications. Identifying these differences precisely and treating each person with diabetes as individually as possible is one of the key tasks facing diabetology in the coming years. Precision diabetology was also the unifying theme at the three-day CEDA Congress held at Düsseldorf University Hospital (UKD). Research has made significant progress in recent years: clinically relevant subtypes are now known and their molecular basis is increasingly well understood. “The more precisely we understand which diabetes subtype a person has, the more targeted our treatment can be. This not only makes treatment more effective but could also help conserve resources within the healthcare system,” emphasises Prof. Michael Roden, Scientific Director and Spokesman for the Board of the DDZ, as well as Congress President of CEDA 2026. The key task in the coming years will be to translate this knowledge into everyday clinical practice. “Conferences such as CEDA make a crucial contribution. Comparing different care models and research approaches from Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe shows where progress has been made and where gaps still remain,” explains Roden.
The CEDA Congress 2026 took place in the lecture halls of Heinrich Heine University on the campus of Düsseldorf University Hospital.
Two topics received particular attention at the congress: the link between type 2 diabetes and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), formerly known as fatty liver disease, and cardiovascular risks. Around 70 per cent of all people with type 2 diabetes also have MASLD; different subtypes of diabetes carry varying levels of risk of developing severe liver damage. The aim of precision diabetology is to identify these high-risk groups at an early stage, using just a few blood test results available from routine laboratory tests, before irreversible damage occurs. The same applies to cardiovascular diseases.