U.S. Pharmacist Diabetes Update

January 14, 2020

Protective Protein Staves
Off Diabetes
Can a protein found in normal body fat help protect us from diabetes? Scientists think so. A research team from the Icahn School of Medicine studied the effect of increased levels of the protein adipsin in mice and found a long-term protective effect on blood-glucose and beta-cell function. Read more about the effects of higher adipsin levels and the correlation with better diabetes control published in November in Nature Medicine.

Let There Be Light!
New research suggests that amplifying insulin production may be a novel approach to blood-glucose control. Using optogenetics, the process of using light to change the activity level of proteins, pancreatic beta cells are genetically encoded with a photoactivatable adenylate cyclase enzyme. This produces cyclic adenosine monophosphate, which increases glucose-triggered insulin production in the beta cell. Read more about this study, published in ACS Synthetic Biology.

Liver Gene Responsible
for Diabetes?
Could the secret to treating diabetes actually exist in our liver? New research is suggesting that it might. Read more about this study, in which researchers at the University of Tsukuba are attempting to answer that very question and share their findings in the study published in October 2019 in Hepatology.

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