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Researchers May Have Found Cause of Type 2 Diabetes
ozmanjusri writes "Scientists at Sydney's Garvan Institute have identified an enzyme called PKCepsilon as the active agent that blocks the production of insulin in diabetics. Insulin injections and implants try to control levels but do not address the reasons why insulin production is failing. This discovery may allow pharmaceutical companies to develop a drug to block the enzyme, allowing cells in the pancreas to function normally, though the team's leader, Trevor Biden, says 'What we've identified is a target that we can now latch onto to get therapy, but the journey from target to tablet of course is a long one ... It's probably going to take another 10 years at least to get something that's effective in humans.'"
Yes, but would they actually do that? There's a hell of a lot more money to be made by treating the symptoms, rather than curing the disease.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
Seems like whenever the thought of "a Cure" or extremely important treatment comes up, its always 10 years away. When I first got type 1 diabetes they estimated that a cure would be ready in 10 years (This is 10 years ago), and my doctor also promptly told me that that is what they had said 10 years earlier. Every year now or so if I bother to try and keep up on whats new with diabetes, all I see is "d00dz 10 years till we got us a cure!". Diabetes, keeping funding and grants in pockets of people 10 years at a time, for the past 40 years.
people eat like shit and don't exercise. That's it. Pretty simple huh? Fiances father got diagnose with type 2 diabetes. Effecting him pretty badly for a year. Decides to eat healthy, drop weight, and exercise. Guess what happened? He is healthy now, no issues. You read tons of studies saying the same thing.
But that isn't profitable to companies....
You do realize that there is a lot of money to be made in preventive medicines of which this would be one. I doubt that they could cure it but removing the need for insulin would be a major benefit to both consumer and drug companies. My mom receives her insulin via overnight shipment - the packaging weighs many multiples compared to what was shipped. If its delivered improperly someone else eats the cost... meaning you and me. If the pharms could elminate medicines that require special handling it saves them money too.
Besides, giving a choice between paying for insulin, needles, blood test kits, or just a pill I know which I would take. I'd also be thankful someone is making it then going all tinfoil over their supposed real goals of keeping me sick - sick people die and don't buy more drugs - get over that
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The Garvan Institute is a non-profit organisation. They do patent discoveries, but any income earned is used to fund other research projects.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Unfortunately, you've got this wrong. Type II Diabetes is a failure of equilibrium functionality, not a case of hyperactivity of equilibrium mechanisms in the body. The body works to maintain equilibrium by releasing insulin following consumption of a meal, which in turn tells the cells of the body (primarily skeletal muscle cells) to take up glucose from the bloodstream. Type II diabetes, at its core, is a syndrome of insulin resistance, not a syndrome in insulin insufficiency. The skeletal muscle cells become less attentive to insulin signalling and refuse to take up glucose from the bloodstream in response to normal insulin levels within the body. The pancreas attempts to compensate by up-regulating the insulin thermostat, producing more and more insulin to try to get the muscles to respond by taking up the glucose. Glucose, if not taken up rapidly by the body's cells, can be harmful as it results in glycosylation of proteins all over the body (including in hemoglobin, in the form of HbA1C, which is a useful marker for long-term diabetes management analysis). The muscles become less willing to respond to the increased doses of insulin produced by the pancreas. Eventually, if not managed carefully, the pancreas may "burn itself out" - producing sub-normal levels of insulin, causing a type II diabetic to become insulin-injection dependent.
This research is incredibly interesting since it may reverse the burn-out syndrome and alleviate the need for poorly managed type II diabetics to inject insulin. It will not, however, reverse the insulin resistance present in insulin-sensitive cells within the body.
This is because after years of consistent overeating, your body begins to believe that elevated levels of blood sugar is "normal" and there is no need to produce more insulin.
This isn't true.
There are 2 components to type 2 diabetes
1) Insulin Resistance - Body isn't able to use the insulin produced efficiently.
2) Insulin Production - Body isn't able to produce enough insulin.
Here is the typical progression of type 2 diabetes.
For a normal person, when he eats carbohydrates, his blood sugar goes up. In response,
the pancreas produces insulin. The insulin pushes the blood sugar into the cells & the blood
sugar goes down.
When a person has insulin resistance, his pancreas produces insulin, but this insulin isn't
used efficiently. The insulin isn't able to push all the sugar into the cells. Hence the blood
sugar level doesn't go down immediatelly. Hence all the body parts are soaked in sugar which
is harmful to the organs. The pancreas is also an organ. The pancreas is soaked in sugar. This
causes insulin producing cells in the pancreas to die. This is a cyclic process i.e. because some
insulin producing cells die, the pancreases produces less insulin - this in turn causes blood
sugar to rise even more, which in turn causes more damage to the pancreas. This process keeps
continuing & finally when the pancreas has lost more than 50% of it's insulin producing cells,
blood sugar starts going out of control & he gets diabetes.
Typically, people who get type 2 diabetes are people who have the gene for
Insulin Resistance.
There are many people how much ever they eat, they don't get diabetes, or they
get it at a very advance age. Excess weight increases Insulin Resistance, but is
not the the cause of it.
A person with IR can delay or avoid diabetes for a long time by eating less, but
eating alone isn't the cause of type 2 diabetes.
Ok. So Doctors are people too. People with consciences. If a Doctor comes up with a promising cure to Diabetes, there is no corporate ethos in the world that will stop him from developing it.
One of my professors is a radiologist. One day at a banquet, he was seated next to a woman who was DEAD certain that there was a very simple cure to cancer that had already been discovered and that people like him were keeping it hidden so that they could make boatloads of money. After holding his tongue for half an hour, he replied "My mother died of Cancer."
I'm a 50 year old type 2 diabetic. I weigh 210 lbs, have a 34 inch waist, and stand 6'1", can bench press more than my body weight, and run an average of 12-14 Miles/week. Even in this condition, I have to use an oral medication (Glucophage) to fully control my blood sugar.
When I was first diagnosed, I had let myself get out of shape, and weighed about 225. I had to use insulin for about six months until I built enough muscle and lost enough fat to go to just oral meds, and for the first year after that, I had to take several.
I was in the army for 13 years when I was younger, and among other posts held the position of physical fitness instructor. I routinely scored on the extended scale in the APFT (Army Physical Fitness Test) every 6 Months for 8 to 10 years. (Basically, a Soldier had to score above 150 to finish basic training, extended scale starts with scoring over 100 in all three events - if you fall short in one, the high scores in the other two don't count). Getting back in shape with Diabetes was harder for me than getting to the top 2% of the Army. (And I had rank by then, so it wasn't drill sergeants pushing me, either).
I was never an Airborne Ranger, but I know a type 2 Diabetic who was, and he says getting back in shape felt about like Hell Week in ranger training (but lasted several months in his case).
There are several studies that show type 2 diabetes actually resets the satiation levels of the brain so that people with it get hungrier and have longer before they register fullness when their blood sugar levels are off (The disease thus impairs your judgment of one of means to fight it). There are others that show how a normal person will have extreme soreness the first few exercise sessions but if they push through it will stop feeling nearly that sore and how the average Type 2 Diabetic can expect that to continue for months or even more.
(It was about 6 months in my case - six months of near constant fatigue and extreme muscle soreness - six months when I did 8 reps with a weight, then 2 days later did the same 8 reps, then 2 days later did the same 8 reps, only to gain a rep every 2-3 weeks, before the process started getting up to normal sorts of gains - six months of worrying I would injure a foot with all the running and they would do what frequently happens to diabetics - amputation!).
Comments like yours are every bit as untrue and abusive as telling a rape victim they deserved it because they were dressed wrong. You should be heartily ashamed. It's not the researchers who 'just don't get it' here, it's people like you.
Who is John Cabal?