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

It's like that radio commerial...

[nonsequitor]

Part of you is worried about your weight, but All of you wants a Baby! Call XYZ fertility clinic today.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[masternerdguy]

Actually well managed diabetics can live completely healthy, long, and productive lives. My dad's one of them.

Cryptochrome

[Anonymous Coward]

is like the coolest word ever.

Re:Cryptochrome

[rrohbeck]

Sounds like some really old Kodak stuff dug up by archaeologists.

Re:Treatment woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

And well managed diabetics may yet still age more rapidly than non-diabetics. I am one of them.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. Don't eat too much HIGHLY CONCENTRATED SHORT CARBOHYDRATES.
You can eat as much vegetables as you want. You can stuff yourself until you burst every day. You won't get fat and you won't get sick.

A balanced, species-appropriate diet with no defective (half-heated) proteins... is that so hard?

Also, YES there is a treatment. You just don't know it yet. (You are aware that you're not “God”, right? [With doctors, you always have to ask.])

Re:don't get yer hopes up

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes the number of calories does not change. How your body handles those calories do.

I do some casual bodybuilding. If I consume all my protein goodness early in the day then my body burns the food for energy. If I eat it at night then my body says 'Hey! I don't need energy right now and this protein could really be great at patching up all that worn muscle tissue.' If my caloric intake as a whole does not compensate for the loss of calories during the day then I lose fat and gain muscle.

The time of day you eat certain things changes four hours of muscle building, fat burning deliciousness into four hours of sweaty it-isn't-doing-anything exhaustion.

Re:don't get yer hopes up

[Ocker3]

Actually no, food eaten within three hours of going to sleep tends to get turned directly into fat and not properly broken down into the normal nutrients, so the timing of food consumption can make a difference.

My wife will just have to wait

[cvtan]

until there is a Treatwomen.

Cycloset

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a little known drug on the market called Cycloset that works for Type 2 Diabetes, and part of it is working on the biological clock. Its been around a few years, but it was out of patent before it got approved so most doctors don't even know about it.

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:Error in TFA

[techno-vampire]

Type II diabetes current cause (if we ignore the obvious bad diet and lack of exercise) is an autoimmune response taking out insulin receptors in tissues.

I know that Type I is an autoimmune disorder, but AFAICT, Type II isn't. Do you have any sources for your claim, or are you just making it up as you go along?

Re:Error in TFA

[Antarius]

However, I've heard Random People On The Internet talk about reduced insulin production (but not lack of production, which would be type I) being an issue in type II as well.

That sounds like Diabetes LADA (Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults), which people often nickname "Type 1.5"

Interestingly, family history is still a factor, but it's family history of autoimmune disorders rather than diabetes. In my case, my father has a type of vasculitis that causes his immune system to attack non-vital parts of his own body (veins, bloody vessels, lungs and kidneys - nobody needs them), and after inheriting the flawed genes, my own immune system decides that the insulin-producing beta cells in my pancreas are the enemy.

That leaves me with all of the 'benefits' of Types I and II, effectively. I get all of the fun of calculating and injecting doses of insulin, while none of the weight-loss! Lucky me.

If I could only have been Type II DM. Then I could just take a pill and diet.

Re:Sorry folks...

[girlintraining]

Just commenting to undo a bad mod. Pity about the good mods, but dems da breaks.

You need to stop doing that. Here on slashdot we have +1, Insightful (I agree with your political statement), -1, Flamebait (You said something bad about [religion]... Die Heathen!), +1, Funny (You said something obvious, but in a novel way), +1 Underrated (A lot of people are going to downmod you for this in meta, but I love you in secret), and -1, Overrated (I'm too cowardly to delurk and tell you why I disagree).

Your post clearly indicates you are unaware of this and are attempting to moderate based on a novel concept known as 'merit'. I hope they mod you into oblivion, you community-destroying monster! You corrupt everything /. moderation is about. It's a debasement of our esteemed institution of knee-jerk moderation. :)

P.S. Thanks.

That was obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

It's obvious that obesity is related to problems of the biological clock. Their clock is always telling them it's lunch time.

Re:That was obvious

[rrohbeck]

Mod parent up. What you eat determines how many calories you eat. Your digestive system senses volume, not calories. So if you eat easily digested simple carbs, you'll be empty within an hour and your stomach tells the brain "Feed Me!"
Hence eat fiber, protein, good fats, no simple carbs, yada yada.

Re:FIRST

[Anonymous Coward]

A warrior's drink.

Link Down. Try Here Instead...

[RandCraw]

http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/science/09-15BiologicalClock.asp

not the solution

[hareball101]

And how does this relate to the fact that children are getting Diabetes type 2 younger and younger, at an increasing rate?

The answer is simple; carbohydrates.

Most of our carbs come from plants more closely related to grass(corn, wheat), than to a vegetable

Solution: eat grass fed animals, eat lots of root and leafy green vegetables and some fruit ... ditch the soda, pizza, pasta, burgers, donuts, etc.

Re:not the solution

[Kergan]

Sounds like Atkins. According to some specialists, though, fructose (aka sugar, HFCS, etc.) is the carb you should be really worrying about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Re:not the solution

[bill_mcgonigle]

Most of our carbs come from plants more closely related to grass [msu.edu](corn, wheat), than to a vegetable

Um, yeah - vegetables have very few carbs. If you want carbs, go for the starchy grains.

This wasn't a problem until the last century. Either humans changed or something about the food supply changed. Surely a 20x increase in sugar intake per capita is coincidental - it must be the oatmeal.

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.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Phrogman]

I have never eaten too much. I got T2 Diabetes all the same - because it can be genetic it seems.

Still peddling the overweight myth...

[advocate_one]

They're still pushing the myth that obesity causes Type 2 Diabetes.

So wrong according to latest research.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[advocate_one]

I think his point was that with a little willpower, diabetes can be managed with diet alone. No need for injections.

Sadly that is NOT true... the elevated blood glucose levels after meals cause damage to the beta cells in the pancreas killing them off. No matter how tightly controlled your diet is, you will be killing some cells off with every meal you have. The point with diet control is to delay the progression to diet plus pills and then onto insulin... If you can keep your long term HbA1c levels down below 7%, then the secondary complications of Diabetes (blindness, amputations of lower extremities, kidney failure) will be kept at bay.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Ironhandx]

common myth about Type 2 diabetes is that it is caused by over-eating.

This is in no way the case.

Certain people are genetically pre-disposed to type 2 diabetes. Over-eating on carbs is simply a very good trigger for the diabetes, this is what causes the correlation.

However while quantity can definitely cause the onset faster, just eating a slice of bread a day for someone that has the pre-disposition will eventually trigger it. Any kind of what most people would consider "normal" quantity of refined sugars and carbs will definitely trigger it eventually.

As with all things genetic you can be more susceptible than others of course, but the only real way to avoid getting it if you know you are pre-disposed to being a type 2 diabetic is multivitamins and a meat-heavy diet combined with a smaller selection of nutritious fruits and veggies.