MORE than 1,200 people will be striding out around a Hampshire country park this weekend to help in the search for a cure for diabetes.

Families and companies from across the county will descend on Itchen Valley Country Park in West End on Sunday to take part in this year's Walk to Cure Diabetes.

The event, which is being started by Meridian presenter and Daily Echo columnist Fred Dinenage, is expected to raise £100,000 for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF).

All proceeds will help the charity in its mission to find a cure for type one diabetes and its complications. The walk, of between four and five miles, will take place from 11am, whatever the weather.

Walkers must check-in between 9.30am and 10.45am, and those who don't fancy putting on their walking boots are invited to run or even cycle the course. JDRF regional development manager Jayne Ashley said: "People can still register this week or from 9am on the day.

"At present, we have more than 1,100 registered walkers but the phones are still ringing from late-comers who have been reading about it."

The event will be JDRF's third annual walk in Hampshire and its biggest fundraiser of the year.

Money raised will help fund research into type one - or juvenile - diabetes, which affects about 350,000 people in the UK. Among international research projects funded by JDRF is one based at Southampton University, studying the development of the human pancreas as a model for manipulating stem cells.

Phone 023 8058 6269 to register for Walk to Cure Diabetes or e-mail: jashley@jdrf.org.uk

See Monday's Echo for full coverage of the event.

JUVENILE DIABETES:

Diabetes is a chronic, debilitating condition, which impairs the body's ability to use food properly. There are two types - one and two.

Juvenile - or type one - diabetes occurs when a person's pancreas stops producing insulin.

Usually striking in childhood, it lasts a lifetime and requires multiple injections and finger prick blood tests just to stay alive.

Studies have shown the incidence of juvenile diabetes in the under-fives has doubled in the space of ten years in the UK.

Insulin does not cure diabetes, nor does it prevent its eventual and devastating effects, which include kidney failure, blindness, nerve damage, amputation, heart attack and stroke.

Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure, adult blindness, and non-traumatic amputations and a leading cause of nerve damage, stroke and heart attacks.

Researchers are closing in on finding a cure for juvenile diabetes, which may also help scientists find a cure for other autoimmune diseases like arthritis and lupus.