|
|
|
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
 Latest
Diabetes Medical and Health News Headlines
|
|
Diabetes Medical and Health News Headlines
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
All Recent Diabetes Medical Condition News Headlines |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Aggressive diabetes control in very ill questioned
CHICAGO (Reuters) - An analysis of recent diabetes studies debunks the notion that aggressive blood sugar control of critically ill hospital patients with diabetes can help save lives, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday. (Source: Reuters: Health)...
POSTED 08/26/2008 at 08:12 PM --
|
Early trigger for type-1 diabetes found in mice
Scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine are shedding light on how type-1 diabetes begins. (Source: News-Medical News Feed)...
POSTED 08/26/2008 at 07:07 PM --
|
Caesarean babies linked to diabetes
BELFAST, Northern Ireland, Aug. 26 (UPI) -- Babies delivered by Caesarean section have a 20 percent higher risk of developing diabetes in childhood, researchers in Northern Ireland said. (Source: Health News - UPI.com)...
POSTED 08/26/2008 at 06:33 PM --
|
Is there a surgical cure for diabetes?
(Source: Health Behavior News Digest)...
POSTED 08/26/2008 at 05:47 PM --
|
Early trigger for type-1 diabetes found in mice
Scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine are shedding light on how type-1 diabetes begins. (Source: Huliq Health News)...
POSTED 08/26/2008 at 02:22 PM --
|
Caesarean babies more likely to develop diabetes
Babies delivered by Caesarean section have a 20 per cent higher risk than normal deliveries of developing the most common type of diabetes in childhood, according to a study led by Queen's University Belfast. (Source: Huliq Health News)...
POSTED 08/26/2008 at 01:49 PM --
|
Caesarean babies at risk of diabetes
New research from the UK is suggesting that babies born by Caesarean section have a 20% higher risk of developing type 1 diabetes. (Source: News-Medical News Feed)...
POSTED 08/26/2008 at 06:03 AM --
|
Endocrinologists and surgeons join forces to fight type 2 diabetes
At the 1st World Congress for Interventional Therapies for Type 2 Diabetes, prominent endocrinologists from around the world will convene in an exchange with leading surgeons about the role of surgery and other emerging new therapies for type 2 diabetes. (Source: Health News from Medical News Today)...
POSTED 08/26/2008 at 05:00 AM --
|
Cholesterol levels linked to cancer
The risk of cancer in diabetics may be connected to cholesterol levels. (Source: Medical Headlines From Ivanhoe.com)...
POSTED 08/26/2008 at 12:00 AM --
|
Terminally ill rodents with type 1 diabetes restored to full health with single dose of leptin
August 26, 2008 (Science Daily) - Terminally ill rodents with type 1 diabetes have been restored to full health with a single injection of a substance other than insulin by scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
Since the discovery of insulin in 1922, type 1 diabetes (insulin-dependent diabetes) in humans has been treated by injecting insulin to lower high blood sugar levels and prevent diabetic coma.
New findings by UT Southwestern researchers, which appear online and in a future issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that insulin isn't the only agent that is effective. Leptin, a hormone produced by the body's fat cells, also lowers blood glucose levels and maintains them in a normal range for extended periods, they found.
"The fact that these animals don't die and are restored to normal health despite a total lack of insulin is hard for many researchers and clinicians to believe," said Dr. Roger Unger, professor of internal medicine and senior author of the study. "Many scientists, including us, thought it would be a waste of time to give leptin in the absence of insulin. We've been brainwashed into thinking that insulin is the only substance that can correct the consequences of insulin deficiency."
The mechanism of leptin's glucose-lowering action appears to involve the suppression of glucagon, a hormone produced by the pancreas that raises glucose levels. Normally, glucagon is released when the glucose, or sugar, level in the blood is low. In insulin deficiency, however, glucagon levels are inappropriately high and cause the liver to release excessive amounts of glucose into the bloodstream. This action is opposed by insulin, which tells the body's cells to remove sugar from the bloodstream.
In type 1 diabetes, which affects about 1 million people in the U.S., the pancreatic islet cells that produce insulin are destroyed. Type 1 diabetics must take insulin multiple times a day to metabolize blood glucose and regiment their diets. In comparison, patients with non-insulin dependent, or type 2, diabetes make insulin, but their bodies don't respond well to it. Type 2 diabetes affects between 18 million and 20 million people in this country.
In the current study, researchers tested for the first time whether a single injection of the leptin gene given to insulin-deficient mice and rats on the verge of death from diabetic coma could reverse the severe condition and prevent the animals from dying. The animals that received the leptin gene began producing excessive amounts of leptin, which reversed all the measurable consequences of type 1 diabetes including weight loss, hyperglycemia and ketoacidosis, a potentially fatal condition that develops when the body doesn't have enough insulin to meet basic metabolic requirements. Much of the effect was mediated by complete suppression of the high glucagon levels, said Dr. Xinxin Yu, assistant instructor of internal medicine and lead author of the study.
"These animals were actually dying," Dr. Yu said. "But if we gave them the leptin gene, within two weeks, the terminally ill rodents were restored to full health without any other treatment."
Dr. Unger said it's too premature to know whether leptin might someday replace insulin as a treatment for diabetic patients, but this study demonstrates that leptin could at least handle some of insulin's job requirements and do it for longer periods of time. Injected insulin is biologically active for only three to four hours.
"My hope is that you could give leptin for one type of action – glucagon's suppression, for example – and insulin for another. Or perhaps give a substance other than insulin entirely," Dr. Unger said. "What would be a tremendous advance would be the ability to give an oral agent that suppresses glucagon without injections."
Dr. Yu said the research team hypothesizes that leptin combats diabetes not only be suppressing glucagon's action on the liver, but also by boosting the insulin-like actions of IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor-1), a hormone that promotes growth and mimics insulin.
"One of the things that happens when a child gets type 1 diabetes is their growth is stunted until they're given insulin," Dr. Unger said. "The same is true with these mice. However, we found that if you take a diabetic rat that's not receiving insulin and make it hyperleptinemic, it almost catches up growthwise."
While the treated animals' blood glucose levels inched back up over time, their hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) consistently remained well below the elevated pre-treatment levels. The untreated rodents, on the other hand, died within two or three days. The researchers tracked the treated rodents for 25 weeks.
The next step is to study other potential glucagon suppressants and begin leptin clinical trials within the next year.
Other UT Southwestern researchers involved in the study were Dr. May-Yun Wang, assistant professor of internal medicine; Dr. Zhao Wang, postdoctoral researcher in internal medicine; and former postdoctoral fellow Dr. Byung-Hyun Park.
The work was supported by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. (Source: Diabetes News from dLife.com)...
POSTED 08/25/2008 at 11:00 PM --
|
Caesarean babies more likely to develop diabetes
August 26, 2008 (EurekAlert) - Babies delivered by Caesarean section have a 20 per cent higher risk than normal deliveries of developing the most common type of diabetes in childhood, according to a study led by Queen's University Belfast.
The team, led by Dr Chris Cardwell and Dr Chris Patterson, examined 20 published studies from 16 countries including around 10,000 children with Type 1 diabetes and over a million control children.
They found a 20 per cent increase in the risk of children born by Caesarean section developing the disease. The increase could not be explained by factors such as birth weight, the age of the mother, order of birth, gestational diabetes and whether the baby was breast-fed or not, all factors associated with childhood diabetes in previous studies.
Dr Cardwell, from the School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences, said: "This study revealed a consistent 20 per cent increase in the risk of Type 1 diabetes. It is important to stress that the reason for this is still not understood. It is possible that children born by Caesarean section differ from other children with respect to some unknown characteristic which consequently increases their risk of diabetes, but it is also possible that Caesarean section itself is responsible.
"Type 1 diabetes occurs when the immune system destroys the insulin producing cells in the pancreas, and one theory suggests that being born by Caesarean section may affect the development of the immune system because babies are first exposed to bacteria originating from the hospital environment rather than to maternal bacteria."
Dr Chris Patterson said: "The study findings are interesting, but unless a biological mechanism is established it would be unwise to read too much into this association between Caesarean section delivery and diabetes.
"Fortunately figures from the Northern Ireland Type 1 diabetes register indicate that only around two per 1,000 children will develop diabetes by their 15th birthday so a 20 per cent increase is on quite a low baseline risk."
Diabetes is a serious condition that, if not managed, can lead to fatal complications including heart disease, stroke, kidney failure and amputations. There are 2.3 million people in the UK diagnosed with diabetes and 250,000 with Type 1 diabetes. In Northern Ireland over 62,000 people have diabetes, 6,000 of them with Type 1 diabetes.
Around one in four babies in Northern Ireland are delivered by Caesarean section, which is significantly higher that the World Health Organisation's recommended rate of 15 per cent.
Iain Foster, Director of Diabetes UK Northern Ireland, said: "Not all women have the choice of whether to have a Caesarean section or not, but those who do may wish to take this risk into consideration before choosing to give birth this way.
"We already know that genetics and childhood infections play a vital role in the development of Type 1 diabetes in children, but the findings of this study indicate that the way a baby is delivered could affect how likely it is to develop this condition later in life. Diabetes UK Northern Ireland would welcome more research in this area." (Source: Diabetes News from dLife.com)...
POSTED 08/25/2008 at 11:00 PM --
|
Potential diabetes treatment selectively kills autoimmune cells from human patients
August 26, 2008 (Science Daily) - In experiments using blood cells from human patients with diabetes and other autoimmune disorders, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have confirmed the mechanism behind a potential new therapy for type 1 diabetes.
A team led by Denise Faustman, MD, PhD, director of the MGH Immunobiology Laboratory, showed that blocking a metabolic pathway regulating the immune system specifically eliminated immune cells that react against a patient's own tissues.
Faustman and her colleagues previously discovered a technique that reversed type 1 disease in a mouse model. The current study, which will appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and has been released online, is the first demonstration of this strategy in human cells and supports the viability of a clinical trial that is currently underway.
"Our studies in mice showed that we could selectively kill the defective autoimmune cells that were destroying insulin-producing islets," says Faustman. "These results show that the same selective destruction can occur in humans cells and connect what we saw in our animal studies with the protocol we are pursuing in our Phase I clinical trial."
Type 1 diabetes and other autoimmune diseases are caused when the body's immune cells mistakenly attack an individual's own cells. In several studies over the past decade, Faustman's team showed that triggering the expression of the immune-system modulator tumor necrosis factor (TNF) in diabetic mice led to the death of the T cells responsible for destroying insulin-producing pancreatic islets. After receiving this treatment, the animals were able to regenerate healthy islet cells that produced normal levels of insulin, effectively curing the animals' diabetes.
The current study used T cells from more than 1,000 patients with type 1 diabetes, other autoimmune disorders and healthy controls. First the researchers found that treatment with TNF killed CD8 T cells, the immune system's "killer" cells, from diabetic patients but not CD4 "helper" T cells. TNF treatment also induced the death of CD8 T cells from other autoimmune disease patients but had no negative effect on cells from healthy controls.
Since TNF interacts with immune cells through two different receptors – TNFR1 and TNFR2, which activate different signaling pathways – the researchers next tested several TNF agonists, substances that mimic the molecule's actions. One of those TNF agonists acts through TNFR1, which is expressed on all T cells, and three act through TNFR2, only found on subpopulations of T cells. While neither the TNFR1 agonist nor two of the three substances that activate the TNFR2 pathway had any significant effects, a third TNFR2 agonist induced cell death in particular CD8 cells from patients with diabetes and other autoimmune disorders. As with TNF treatment, no cell death occurred in cells from healthy participants.
Further experiments with blood samples from several diabetic patients revealed that the population of CD8 T cells responsible for the autoimmune destruction of pancreatic islets consistently died after treatment with the TNFR2 agonist, while similar cells from a non-diabetic proliferated. However, CD8 cells from diabetic participants that were targeted against two common viruses were not killed by exposure to the TNFR2 agonist, confirming that the protocol only leads to the death of T cells responsible for an autoimmune reaction.
The clinical trial based on Faustman's earlier studies is testing whether use of bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG), a generic drug that temporarily elevates TNF levels, will reduce autoimmune T cells in patients with type 1 diabetes. The current Phase 1 trial, which has been approved by the FDA and is directed by David M. Nathan, MD, director of the MGH Diabetes Center, focuses on determining the optimal dose and timing of BCG administration. More information on the 18-month trial, which began in March, is available at http://www.faustmanlab.org/. (Source: Diabetes News from dLife.com)...
POSTED 08/25/2008 at 11:00 PM --
|
Caesarean babies 'at greater diabetes risk'
BABIES born by Caesarean section have a 20 per cent higher chance of becoming insulin- dependent diabetics in childhood, according to researchers. (Source: Scotsman.com News - Health)...
POSTED 08/25/2008 at 07:00 PM --
|
Researchers use loaf to find oat-based diabetes remedy
SCIENTISTS hope they have cooked up a way to tackle diabetes by helping create a new type of bread. (Source: Scotsman.com News - Health)...
POSTED 08/25/2008 at 07:00 PM --
|
Healthy lifestyle reduces stroke risk
People with lifestyles that are associated with a low risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer, also appear to have a low risk of stroke, study results show. (Source: MedWire News - Consumer Health)...
POSTED 08/25/2008 at 07:00 PM --
|
Ut southwestern scientists discover leptin can also aid type 1 diabetics
Terminally ill rodents with type 1 diabetes have been restored to full health with a single injection of a substance other than insulin by scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center. (Source: News-Medical News Feed)...
POSTED 08/25/2008 at 06:58 PM --
|
Two experiments suggest new direction for diabetes
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two experimental treatments suggest new directions for treating diabetes, both using compounds already made by the body, researchers in the United States reported on Monday. (Source: Reuters: Health)...
POSTED 08/25/2008 at 04:21 PM --
|
Impaired chronotropic response may evaluate cardiac risk in diabetic patients
A study shows that impaired chronotropic response after exercise treadmill testing is an effective, noninvasive tool to evaluate cardiac risk in patients with diabetes. Medscape Medical News (Source: Medscape Medical News Headlines)...
POSTED 08/25/2008 at 04:00 PM --
|
Ldl cholesterol tied to increased cancer risk in diabetics
Using these levels as markers could help clinicians better treat patients, Chinese study finds. Source: HealthDay (Source: MedlinePlus Health News)...
POSTED 08/25/2008 at 04:00 PM --
|
Ask the doctor: diabetics must look after their kidneys...
Dr Martin Scurr has been treating patients for more than 30 years and is one of the country's leading GPs. Here he tackles kidneys and hives... (Source: the Mail online | Health)...
POSTED 08/25/2008 at 03:11 PM --
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
IMPORTANT NOTICE:
The information provided on this site is intended for your general knowledge only and is not a substitute for professional
medical advice or treatment for specific medical conditions. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat a health problem or disease without consulting with a
qualified healthcare provider. Please consult your healthcare provider with any questions or concerns you may have regarding your condition.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Featured Product! |
 |
|
Total Balance
Men's Plus |
|
"The restoration and maintenance of normal organ and brain function, a strong immune system, and the balancing of hormones is the key to vibrant health and in avoiding premature-aging!" |
|
CLICK HERE
for more info... |
|
|
