Sugar Suggests New Strategy For Treating Diabetes

By Andrew Jin

Diabetes is a group of metabolic diseases where a person has high blood sugar. This is either because not enough insulin is produced in the body, or because the cells do not respond to the insulin that is produced. Insulin is the hormone essential to regulating metabolism of carbohydrates and fats in the body. Insulin causes cells to take up glucose from the blood, and when it is absent, it causes a person to have high blood sugar, which can cause serious health problems. In the United States, 25.8 million children and adults have diabetes, 8.3% of the population. Recently, researchers led by Yuval Dor and Benjamin Glaser of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that sugar may be a remedy for diabetes. It was found that sugar fuels the growth of insulin-making cells. As the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas used more sugar, the cells reproduced much faster. The results were confirmed in the experiment where researches killed about 80 percent of beta cells in the pancreas. When the blood sugar level was high in the mice, the cells had grown back, but when the blood sugar levels were kept normal, the cells' regeneration rate dropped. This convinced the researchers that glucose was indeed involved in the regrowth of the insulin-making cells in the pancreas. Using this strategy, new treatments may be developed for both type 1 and type 2 diabetes by harnessing the mechanism involved in the glucose-fueled cell growth. By increasing growth of cells in the pancreas, it will allow people with diabetes to produce normal amounts of insulin, treating type 1 diabetes. Also, the strategy could be made to restore function to the cells, and allow them to respond to insulin. This is an interesting discovery as it may potentially be made into an effective treatment method for diabetes. With so many people diagnosed with the disease in the US, many people's lives will be improved if this strategy is further developed.

Citations:

Saey, Tina Hesman. "Sugar fuels growth of insulin-making cells." ScienceNews.
     ScienceNews, 5 Apr. 2011. Web. 8 Apr. 2011. <http://sciencenews.org/view/
     generic/id/72225/title/Sugar_fuels_growth_of_insulin-making_cells>.

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