14 DAY TRIAL // A paper published in yesterday's issue of the journal Nature documents the use of a simple injection to successfully treat type 2 diabetes symptoms in laboratory mice by restoring blood sugar levels.
What's more, the researchers who conducted this series of experiments say that, apart from normalizing blood sugar levels, the injection helped reverse insulin insensitivity in the case of the rodents that received this treatment.
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in the US scientists behind this research project explain that what they injected the laboratory mice with was a protein known to the scientific community as FGF1.
They go on to detail that, after being administered this treatment, the rodents had normal blood sugar levels for over two days. Hence, it is believed that such injections could help pave the way for better diabetes drugs.
“Controlling glucose is a dominant problem in our society. And FGF1 offers a new method to control glucose in a powerful and unexpected way,” specialist Ronald M. Evans commented on the outcome of these experiments.
The FGF1 injections worked by causing cells in the animals' liver to let go of the fat stored inside them and instead absorb sugar from the bloodstream. In time, the cells, which started out as unhealthy, fat-filled ones, came to resemble those of non-diabetic animals.
The mice that these researchers injected with FGF1 displayed type 2 diabetes symptoms due to a special diet that they were fed by the Salk Institute for Biological Studies scientists. This made them reliable test subjects.
Roughly 30 million people in the United States currently suffer from type 2 diabetes. This means that their bodies do not produce enough insulin or that their cells have become insulin-resistant. Either way, the result was a buildup of glucose in the bloodstream.
Previous investigations have shown that, in the case of most of these 30 million type 2 diabetes sufferers, excess weight, coupled with inactivity, is at least partly to blame for the onset of this medical condition, which can trigger serious health problems.
Interestingly enough, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies researchers say that, unlike other drugs used to keep type 2 diabetes under control, FGF1 injections appear to have no serious side-effects, at least not when used to treat laboratory mice.
“With FGF1, we really haven't seen hypoglycemia or other common side effects. It may be that FGF1 leads to a more ‘normal’ type of response compared to other drugs because it metabolizes quickly in the body and targets certain cell types,” said specialist Jae Myoung Suh.