Keyword: diabetes

Is the "American Dream" slipping away?

Drugs, alcohol and suicides contributing to alarming drop in US life expectancy

Drugs, alcohol and suicides are contributing to an alarming drop in US life expectancy, particularly among middle-aged white Americans and those living in rural communities, warn experts in The BMJ. Steven Woolf at Virginia Commonwealth University and Laudan Aron at the Urban Institute in Washington DC, argue that the ideal of the “American Dream” is increasingly out of reach as social…

Broken immune clock

Why shift work might be to blame for obesity and diabetes

About 15 million Americans don’t have a typical nine-to-five workday, and many of these—nurses, firefighters and flight attendants, among many other professions—may see their schedule change drastically one week to the next. As a result, these shift workers’ biological clocks, which keep track of the time of day, cannot keep accurate time, potentially making the negative effects of a high…

Old technique & new technology

Optoacoustics: the sound of cells

For centuries, hands, eyes and ears were the physicians’ most important instruments when it came to detecting and diagnosing disease. Today, one of the traditional techniques, percussion, is being revived, supported by state-of-the-art technology and dressed in a new name: optoacoustics. In one of the most exciting visionary ideas in modern healthcare short laser pulses (optics) are transmitted…

Regulatory B cells

Researchers identify new marker for autoimmune disorders

The immune system is a complex and precisely regulated system. Various activating and inhibiting signals ensure that the immune cells combat pathogenic agents without eliciting a potentially harmful response to its own structures and cells. However, if those two forces are imbalanced, the immune cells may attack and damage cells and tissue of the body itself, which will result in the development…

Efferocytosis

Can stem cell exosome therapy reduce fatal heart disease in diabetes?

Macrophage cells routinely remove dead or dying cells to maintain the body homeostasis. Such removal becomes crucial after serious injury, especially the repair of dead heart muscle after a heart attack. University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers have preliminary data, with cultured cells or diabetic hearts, that diabetes impairs this removal of dead heart-muscle cells. They believe this…

Not so sweet after all

Could sugar be responsible for the obesity and diabetes epidemics?

The idea that sugar could be a fundamental cause of the global obesity and diabetes epidemics, with deleterious effects on the human body that go beyond just empty calories, should be considered seriously again, argues journalist and author Gary Taubes in The BMJ. In the midst of such a huge public health crisis, Taubes says “we must do more to discourage consumption while we improve our…

Ophthalmology

Researchers explore way to reverse diabetic blindness

Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered a cell signaling pathway in mice that triggers vision loss in patients with diabetic retinopathy and retinal vein occlusion – diseases characterized by the closure of blood vessels in the retina, leading to blindness. In experiments that suppressed vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in the eye, researchers were able to re-establish normal blood…

Sugar and health

The not so sweet side of Christmas

A new video by the University of Warwick highlights a bitter side to our sugar consumption at Christmas. The short film highlights how excessive consumption of sugar can affect our health – and how the sugar trade in the past and today has caused inequality and bloodshed. Today Britons eat too much sugar, on average 10 per cent of our daily calories come from sugar which is equivalent to 60 g…

Better together

Making diabetes and hypertension management a community activity

Managing diabetes and high blood pressure can feel like a solitary enterprise dependent on relationships with objects (like pills or foods) and activities (like brisk walks or early bedtimes) instead of relationships with people, but a group of West Virginia University researchers is hoping to change that. The National Institutes of Health has awarded $450,000 to Ranjita Misra, a professor of…

Diabetes research

Novel transcriptomic signature of type 2 diabetic islets identified

Type 2 diabetes, which affects >0.5 billion people worldwide, results from the inability of beta cells in the pancreatic islets to provide the body with enough insulin to maintain blood glucose levels within the range for a healthy life. A collaborative study led by Prof. Michele Solimena at the Technische Universität in Dresden as well as the Helmholtz Zentrum München, Dr. Anke M Schulte at…

The AßC of diabetes

Smart artificial beta cells could lead to new diabetes treatment

Treating type 1 diabetes and some cases of type 2 diabetes has long required painful and frequent insulin injections or a mechanical insulin pump for insulin infusion. But researchers from the University of North Carolina and NC State have now developed what could be a much more patient-friendly option: artificial cells that automatically release insulin into the bloodstream when glucose levels…

Phosphatidic acid phosphatase

A fat-regulating enzyme could hold the key to obesity and diseases

It had already been known that the enzyme known as phosphatidic acid phosphatase plays a crucial role in regulating the amount of fat in the human body. Controlling it is therefore of interest in the fight against obesity. But scientists at Rutgers University-New Brunswick have now found that getting rid of the enzyme entirely can increase the risk of cancer, inflammation and other ills.

Glucose control

"Sugar sponges" - diabetes treatment of the future?

Many diabetes patients must inject themselves with insulin, sometimes several times a day, while others take medications orally to control blood sugar. The injections, as well as the side effects from both regimens, can be painful. Now, one team reports in the Journal of the American Chemical Society progress toward an insulin-free diabetes treatment that requires fewer injections.

Diabetes research

Healing burn wounds with cell therapy

An experimental treatment in mice allows the reprogramming of blood cells in order to promote the healing process of cutaneous wounds. This approach could prove to be beneficial in healing challenging wounds in diabetics and major-burn victims.

Drug development

New research could help address heart problems in diabetics

Research published in Experimental Physiology shows that diabetes-induced changes in heartbeat are primarily regulated by the β1-adrenoceptor. This discovery, once confirmed in humans, may lead to better treatment of heart problems in diabetics by enabling more targeted drugs to be produced.

Study

Link between blood sugar and brain cancer found

New research further illuminates the surprising relationship between blood sugar and brain tumors and could begin to shed light on how certain cancers develop. While many cancers are more common among those with diabetes, cancerous brain tumors called gliomas are less common among those with elevated blood sugar and diabetes, a study from The Ohio State University has found. The discovery builds…

Artificial beta cells

New weapon against Diabetes

ETH Researchers have used the simplest approach yet to produce artificial beta cells from human kidney cells. Like their natural model, the artificial cells act as both sugar sensors and insulin producers.

Additive manufacturing

3D printing: customized insoles for diabetes patients

In the past, insoles for patients with diabetes were hand-made by orthopedic shoemakers. In the future, these specialist shoemakers will be able to produce insoles more cost-effectively thanks to new software and the use of 3D printers. This approach means the mechanical properties of each insole can be assessed scientifically and more effectively.

Diabetes

Friendly Fire in the Pancreas

n type 1 diabetes, the body attacks its own insulin-producing cells. Scientists at Helmholtz Zentrum München, partner in the German Center for Diabetes Research, and their colleagues at Technical University of Munich have now reported in the journal ‘PNAS’ about a mechanism used by the immune system to prepare for this attack. They were able to inhibit this process through targeted…

Diabetic biomarker test successfully verified

EKF Diagnostics announces that its newly introduced Glycated Serum Protein (GSP) LiquiColor® diabetic biomarker test has been verified for use on the Siemens Vista chemistry analyzer. In a scientific poster published by scientists at the Memorial Healthcare System, Hollywood, USA [1], it was demonstrated that EKF’s GSP assay enhances the versatility of the Vista system for the specialized…

Diabetes

Telemedicine could improve access to eye exam

Electronic eye exams could become popular in the U.S. among patients who see them as an easy way to visit the eye doctor. After a nationwide telemedicine diabetic screening program in England and Wales, for example, diabetic retinopathy is no longer the leading cause of blindness there.

Diabetes

Recommended blood pressure targets are being challenged

The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare recently raised the recommended target blood pressure for patients with diabetes. This may lead to more patients suffering from stroke or heart attack, according to a new study from the Sahlgrenska Academy. The new study is the world’s largest on the subject and is based on data from the National Diabetes Register.

Cardiology

Eat chocolate, reduce heart disease risk

Including a small amount of chocolate each day could help prevent diabetes type 2 and insulin resistance. That’s one of the research findings from the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH), the University of Warwick Medical School, the University of South Australia and the University of Maine.

Glucose level

Fiber optic biosensor-integrated microfluidic chip to detect glucose levels

Insulin deficiency and hyperglycemia are two well-known culprits behind diabetes, both of which are reflected in blood glucose concentrations. Now, researchers are working to create ultrasensitive lab-on-a-chip devices to quickly measure glucose concentrations with the goal of developing device for early diagnosis and prevent of diabetes.

Prevention

Next step in preventing diabetes

A team of scientists at Helmholtz Zentrum München, in collaboration with Technische Universität München and the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD), have shown in a preclinical model that specifically modified insulin mimetopes may lead to an immune tolerance. The results, published in ‘Nature Communications’, may be a step to improved prevention of type 1 diabetes.