Results from Japanese research show that changes in blood glucose levels may prevent the onset of type 2 Diabetes. As you may well know, Type 2 Diabetes afflicts many people in the United States as well as around the globe.
According to HealthDay, "Type 2 diabetes often occurs because a person's cells no longer respond to the hormone insulin, which is crucial for lowering blood glucose (sugar) levels. Before a person becomes diabetic, his or her body tries to compensate for the increasing resistance to insulin by upping the amount of insulin secreted and the mass of insulin-secreting cells (beta cells) in the pancreas."
The study took diabetic mice and fed them high fat diets, which reportedly led to an increase in the beta cell mass. HealthDay reports, "the team focused on mice with only one copy of a gene called GCK, which produces a kind of molecular sensor that gauges blood glucose levels. These mice showed little increase in beta cell mass, compared with normal mice."
Healthday states "A molecule known as insulin receptor substrate 2 (IRS2) was shown to be an important mediator of the beta cell mass increase after GCK first sensed increased blood glucose levels, the researchers said. Future studies are needed to determine the mechanism linking GCK and IRS2. The researchers hope that this will lead to new strategies of increasing beta cell mass as a treatment for type 2 diabetes."
Hopefully these studies will spurn more enlightened research and lead to a much needed cure for type 2 diabetes.
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