Researchers at Utah Southwestern Medical Center have made some exciting advances towards a cure for Type 1 diabetes. By eliminating a protein in mice called glucagon, insulin became irrelevant and stopped triggering diabetes or other conditions.
Glucagon is responsible for high blood sugar in type 1 diabetes sufferers, but it prevents blood sugar from getting too low in healthy people. It has long been known that glucagon and insulin work against each other; the former is released when blood sugar is too low and the latter when it's too high. The research also has shortcomings because it was done on mice but may lead to further research.
In type 1 diabetes, which afflicts about a million Americans, insulin alone is unable to restore the body's normal tolerance to glucose, or sugar. Eliminating glucagon can do that, researchers say. In healthy people, glucagon is automatically released when glucose levels in the blood become too low.
In people with diabetes who don't have insulin, the amount of glucagon is excessively high, which can cause the liver to release too much glucose into the blood.
The researchers studied mice that had been genetically wired to have faulty glucagon receptors and gave them an oral glucose tolerance test -- which can be used to diagnose diabetes. The animals without working glucagon receptors with normal insulin production responded normally to the test and didn't develop diabetes.
"These findings suggest that if there is no glucagon, it doesn't matter if you don't have insulin," said the study's senior author Dr. Roger Unger, who went on to say that insulin is still crucial for proper development, but it becomes less critical later in life.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disorder in which the body attacks the pancreas, destroying its islet cells that produce insulin. Because they have a total insulin deficiency, patients with the disease need multiple insulin injections a day to survive and must follow a strict diet.
Type 2 diabetes is a condition in which the body does not make enough insulin and doesn't detect it properly. Insulin shots usually aren't necessary until the illness becomes more advanced.
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Please correct this article. The findings are from researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. The full name is the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
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