Is Bitter Melon the Answer for Diabetes?
Researchers are now investigating the strong blood sugar reducing capability of Bitter Melon, a vegetable commonly used in Asia for medicinal use.
Is There a Link Between Sleep Apnea and Diabetes?
It's a connection that wouldn't surprise Dr. Ulysses Magalang, a sleep expert with Ohio State University Medical Center. He says that depriving your body of oxygen often takes its toll.
"We do not know whether sleep apnea actually causes diabetes. What we do know is that patients with sleep apnea have an increased insulin resistance, which is a hallmark of patients with diabetes," says Magalang.
Dr. Magalang also says that "obesity is a common risk factor for both diabetes and sleep apnea, and fat cells seem to function similarly in both. Studies have shown that wearing airflow masks at night can prevent problems with those fat cells. The problem is, getting patients to wear them."
Research will continue to see if, in fact, there is a direct link between sleep apnea and diabetes.
Diabetes Breath Test Shows Elevated Blood Sugar
At UC Irvine, researchers are working to develop a painless breath test to determine when a patient's blood sugar is high. Dr. Pietro Galassetti and colleagues tested the breath of ten children with type 1 diabetes. They took breath samples while blood sugar levels were high, then continued to gather samples as blood sugar levels dropped in response...MORE
Diabetes and Alzheimer's Linked?
A new study shows that diabetes and Alzheimer s diseases are more related than everybody thought. According to Suzanne M. de la Monte,a Rhode Island Hospital neuropathologist and professor of pathology at Brown University Medical School ,insulin disappears early and dramatically in Alzheimer's disease and many of the unexplained features of Alzheimer's, such as cell death and tangles in the brain, appear to be linked to abnormalities in insulin signaling. MORE......
Pigs: New Best Friends of Type I Diabetics
According to Larry Greenemeier in Scientific America, researchers are experimenting with new ways of harvesting insulin-producing islet cells from pigs and transplanting them into diabetes sufferers in the hope of one day reducing the need for daily insulin shots and even replacing them with twice-yearly islet-cell treatments. MORE......
New Class of Drugs May Treat or Prevent Diabetes
Robert Langreth, in Forbes.com, writes about a new type of drug, called an anti-CD3 antibody, which aims for the first time to delay or prevent development of diabetes by arresting the immune system's attack on pancreatic islet cells. This new class of drugs, now entering final-stage human trials, are given to newly diagnosed patients for just a few days or weeks but appear to preserve some insulin-producing capacity for years. Ultimately the drugs may even be able to prevent the disease from striking people at high risk because of a family history of diabetes or bad genes. MORE.....
Type 1 Diabetes Caused by T-Cell Impotence
According to United Press International, Canadian researchers have discovered specialized T-cells lose their effectiveness over time in some people, leading to the onset of type 1 diabetes.
T-cells suppress and regulate the body's immune responses, but in diabetes mellitus, or type 1 diabetes, the body's own immune system attacks and destroys insulin-producing islet cells in the pancreas. Patients must thereafter inject insulin daily.
"The genetic and cellular mechanisms by which the immune system goes out of control and destroys the islets has been an enigma and an area of great interest over the last few decades," said Dr. Ciriaco Piccirillo of McGill University, one of the study's authors. "For the last several years, it's been postulated that non-functional regulatory T-cells are the critical mechanism, and this study proves it."
The research was conducted on mice that were genetically engineered to model human diabetes. Piccirillo and colleagues discovered the functional potency of T-cells in the mice declined with age, leaving autoimmune responses in the pancreas unchecked. Piccirillo said that finding could lead to the development of immune system-based therapies for a range of diseases.
The study appears in the journal Diabetes.
Development of Oral Insulin Ossulin™ Could Start Soon
Natreon Inc., a nutraceutical industry’s leading supplier of botanical extract ingredients announced today the incorporation of Puredel Ltd., (Puredel), a company aimed at developing
Ossulin™, an oral insulin which has shown promising results in preliminary animal and human studies.. More...
Risk of Diabetes Increased by Smoking
Smoking, already known to cause lung cancer, heart disease and stroke, also increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 44% when compared to nonsmokers, Swiss researchers found. More.....
New Diabetes Drug Could Replace Actos
Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., Japan's biggest drugmaker, sought U.S. approval to sell alogliptin as a once-daily treatment for type-2 diabetes, it said in a statement today. If approved, it will be the Osaka- based company's first new medicine released in the U.S. in more than two years. More...
Lack Of Deep Sleep May Increase Risk Of Type 2 Diabetes
Suppression of deep sleep in healthy young adults significantly increases their risk of type 2 diabetes, report researchers at the University of Chicago Medical Center. More...
Scientists Have Discovered Cause of Diabetes
According to an article in ScienceAlert.com. and published in the October 4, 2007 issue of the well known medical journal, Cell Metabolism, scientists from The Garvan Institute of Medical Research, have identified an enzyme that is active during diabetes and also blocks the availability of insulin. Click here for more
