Chemical That Affects Biological Clock Offers New Diabetes Treatment

First time accepted submitter rosy rohangi writes "Biologists at UC San Diego have discovered a chemical that provides a completely new direction and promise for the development of drugs to treat metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes – a key concern of public health in the U.S. due to the current obesity epidemic. From the article: '...Scientists have long suspected that diabetes and obesity could be related to problems of the biological clock. Laboratory mice with altered biological clocks, for example, often become obese and develop diabetes. Two years ago, a team led by Steve Kay, dean of the Division of Biological Sciences at UC San Diego, discovered the first biochemical link between the biological clock and diabetes. He found that a key protein, cryptochrome, which regulates the biological clocks of plants, insects and mammals also regulates glucose production in the liver and that changes in levels of this protein could improve the health of diabetic mice.'"

Comments

Error in TFA

[techno-vampire]

Reading TFA (Yeah, yeah, I know. However, I'm Type II, and this might be important to me.) I see that it says, "Diabetes is caused by a buildup of glucose in the blood, which can lead to heart disease, stroke, kidney failure and blindness." Wrong! the buildup of glucose in the blood is a symptom of diabetes, not the cause. I gather that this is just a blog post, not the original report so this might just be the blogger not knowing as much about the subject as he thinks he does. Still, it does make you wonder how many other errors are in TFA for the same reason.

Re:Error in TFA

[girlintraining]

"Diabetes is caused by a buildup of glucose in the blood, which can lead to heart disease, stroke, kidney failure and blindness." Wrong! the buildup of glucose in the blood is a symptom of diabetes, not the cause.

It's not an inaccurate statement. Clinically, abnormally high glucose levels after fasting is diagnostic for the disease. Although, like all things in biology, it's not the root cause; High glucose levels are due to insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is not fully understood but it is is often found in patients who are obese. This is why diabetes is referred to as a syndrome. There are many potential causes, and it varies from patient to patient. Obesity is the most common medical condition found co-existing (comorbid) with diabetes.

So just because the author didn't describe the full pathology of the disease, that doesn't make him wrong. If you have high glucose levels, you (very likely) have diabetes. In layman's terms, that's the cause.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[mug funky]

or we could just eat less.

give it 10 years or so... perhaps scarcity will become the norm again.

and with childhood obesity an increasing problem, perhaps evolution really does have something to say about it.

honestly, there need to be some serious efforts made to show people how much they actually need to eat. there's such a thing with alcohol, (not that many abide by it) with the "standard drink". perhaps instead of stupid coloured boxes with percentages on them, a meal could be given a simple "1.5 standard meals" and be done with it.

Re:don't get yer hopes up

[wisnoskij]

Just spent a little while looking this up. There are a lot of opinions both ways, but all the scientific studies I could fine (for example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18842774) implied/proved/gave evidence that night-time eating did in fact produce significantly more weight gain then the same amount eaten during the daytime.