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Hormone
May Help Doctors Treat Diabetes
Excerpt
By Merritt McKinney
NEW YORK (Reuters
Health) - A substance secreted by fat tissue and that seems to
affect how well the body responds to the sugar-processing hormone
insulin may hold promise as a diabetes drug, researchers in Japan
and the US report in two studies.
Because the
cells of some patients with diabetes are resistant to the effects
of insulin, leading to high blood sugar levels, the substance,
known as adiponectin, could help doctors treat diabetes, according
to one of the study's authors, Dr. Philipp E. Scherer, of New
York's Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Both reports,
published in the August issue of Nature Medicine, are part of
a growing realization by scientists that fat cells are more than
just inactive blobs. They show ``that fat tissue can release factors
that influence insulin sensitivity in other tissues,'' Scherer
told Reuters Health. Doctors may also be able to use measurements
of adiponectin to test for insulin resistance.
Scherer's
team was one of two groups of researchers to identify the connection
between adiponectin and insulin resistance, which occurs in patients
with type 2 diabetes, obese people, and those who have had an
extreme loss of body fat.
A group of
researchers led by Takashi Kadowaki of the University of Tokyo
detected below-average levels of adiponectin in insulin-resistant
mice. But treating the mice with adiponectin reversed some of
this resistance.
Scherer and
his colleagues achieved similar results in their experiments with
obese and diabetic mice. After a single injection of adiponectin,
blood sugar levels, which had been high, dropped to normal.
Despite the
promise of adiponectin as a treatment for diabetes, Scherer told
Reuters Health that much more needs to be learned about the hormone.
The two studies were performed only in mice.
Noting that
adiponectin may be involved in burning fat, Dr. Alan R. Saltiel
of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, suggested in an editorial
that accompanies the studies that adiponectin could be ``a big
hit.''
SOURCE:
Nature Medicine 2001;7:887-888, 941-946, 947-953.
Reference
Source 89
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