Insensitivity to insulin, also called insulin resistance, is associated with type 2 diabetes and affects several cell types and organs in the body. Now, scientists from Sweden\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Karolinska Institutet have discovered a mechanism that explains how insulin-producing cells can be insulin resistant and insulin sensitive at the same time.<\/p>\n
The findings are being published in the journal Cell Reports<\/em>, and may lead to future novel treatment strategies for type 2 diabetes.<\/p>\n Insulin is critical in lowering blood glucose concentration. Individuals with type 2 diabetes suffer from insulin resistance and this means that their cells\/organs are insensitive to insulin. In type 2 diabetes the body tries to compensate by producing more insulin, and also by increasing the number of insulin-producing cells. Finding new treatment strategies is only possible by gaining a greater understanding of what happens in the body of a diabetic patient. One scientific challenge is to explain how a cell\/organ at the same time can be insulin resistant in one biological function and insulin sensitive in another.<\/p>\n Drs Barbara Leibiger and Ingo Leibiger, both members of Professor Per-Olof Berggren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s research group at the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, Karolinska Institutet, are particularly interested in the insulin-producing beta cells.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The beta cell must have insulin to work properly\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, says Barbara Leibiger, PhD, Associate Professor, and lead author of the current study. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In a person with diabetes, the beta cells become insensitive to insulin.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n The researchers have previously shown that the beta cell has two receptors with different biological functions, insulin receptor A and insulin receptor B. In the current study, they found that under diabetic conditions, even though insulin receptor B is insulin insensitive for one signalling pathway, insulin can under these conditions instead activate a different signalling pathway, leading to beta cell proliferation. The researchers also identified the factor, PI3K-C2?, that caused the switch from one signalling pathway to another.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The results are important since it explains how the beta cell can go from a differentiated state to a proliferative state\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, says Ingo Leibiger, PhD, Associate Professor, who co-supervised the current study with Professor Berggren. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This means that the cells change from being glucose-responsive to instead increase in number.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n According to the study authors, also including researchers from the Pohang University of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea, factors involved in the re-routing of the insulin signal represent tentative therapeutic targets in the treatment of diabetes.<\/p>\n Karolinska Institutet<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Insensitivity to insulin, also called insulin resistance, is associated with type 2 diabetes and affects several cell types and organs in the body. Now, scientists from Sweden\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Karolinska Institutet have discovered a mechanism that explains how insulin-producing cells can be insulin resistant and insulin sensitive at the same time. The findings are being published in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24088\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}