Type 2 diabetes on the rise
Diabetes breakthrough: Genetically modified mice, without PKCe, were fed high fat diets and became fat and insulin resistant but failed to develop diabetes. Instead, they produced extra insulin."Diabetes already effects 200 million people world wide. I think the incidence of diabetes is going to sky rocket as the population gets fatter.
Fat molecules reduce the ability of muscle cells to respond to insulin, a phenomenon known as 'insulin resistance'. Most of us cope with this by producing more insulin, but people who develop diabetes can't, probably because fat molecules also disrupt the glucose-sensitive, insulin-producing ('beta') cells in their pancreas.
Why do Type 2 diabetics fail to produce insulin?
An important piece to the diabetes puzzle has been found by researchers at Garvan Institute.
A team from Garvan's Diabetes Signalling Unit, led by Associate Professor Trevor Biden and Dr Carsten Schmitz-Peiffer, has identified an enzyme known as "PKCepsilon" (PKCe) that is active during diabetes and blocks the availability of insulin.
"Our recent research shows that absence of PKCe restores the capacity of the pancreas to produce insulin, a result we were not expecting," said Schmitz-Peiffer.
"In PKCe, we believe we've identified a very important biological target that will enable us to address one of the major underlying causes of diabetes," said Biden.
Their findings have just been published in the prestigious international journal, Cell Metabolism.
Source: Garvan Institute press release
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