Diabetes Drug

New drug target for controlling high blood sugar discovered

Researchers have identified a new potential therapeutic target for controlling high blood sugar.

Researchers showed that lipid molecules called phosphatidic acids enhance glucose production in the liver. These findings suggest that inhibiting or reducing production of phosphatidic acids may do the opposite.

Senior author Dr. Anil Agarwal, Professor of Internal Medicine, said that their study establishes a role for phosphatidic acids in enhancing glucose production by the liver and identifies enzymes involved in the synthesis of phosphatidic acids as potential drug targets.

These observations were made while studying a mouse model of lipodystrophy, a rare metabolic disease in which the body is devoid of fat. Lipodystrophy patients often develop diabetes and accumulate fat in the liver because of an imbalance in the body’s ability to properly regulate lipids and glucose.

The causal gene, AGPAT2, which is involved in the synthesis of phosphatidic acid and triglycerides, was removed in the mice, resulting in rodents with generalized lipodystrophy. The research team then examined what impact this genetic manipulation had on phosphatidic acids and glucose production.

The buildup of these lipid molecules was due to an increase in the levels of two enzymes in the liver, diacylglycerol kinase and phospholipase D. Researchers also discovered a marked increase in glucose production in the livers of the lipodystrophic mice.

The lack of normal insulin signaling in these lipodystrophic mice led to unrestricted production of phosphatidic acid, Dr. Agarwal explained, contributing to development of hyperglycemia, or high blood sugar.

The study has been published in The Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Source: Business standard

GSK’s diabetes drug set for European approval

GlaxoSmithKline said on Friday European regulators had given the green light to its once-weekly diabetes drug albiglutide, which it is marketing as Eperzan.

Albiglutide belongs to the same class of injectable GLP-1 drugs as Victoza, from Novo Nordisk, and Byetta and Bydureon, from Bristol-Myers Squibb and AstraZeneca.

A positive recommendation for a drug by the European Medicines Agency is generally followed by a marketing authorization by the European Commission. GSK said a final decision was anticipated later this quarter.

Last year regulators in the United States pushed back an approval decision on the drug until April 15.

Source: Reuters

Traditional Chinese medicine may reduce risk of diabetes

Diabetes Definition

New research shows Chinese herbal medicine may hold promising solutions for people with pre-diabetes, reports a study in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

A prediabetes diagnosis indicates that an individual has elevated blood sugar levels, but his or her glucose levels are not high enough to have developed Type 2 diabetes.

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) focuses on establishing balance in the body in order to treat disease, according to study author Dr. Chun-Su Yuan, director of the Tang Center for Herbal Medicine Research at the University of Chicago.

“It’s a more holistic approach, using medicine to change the overall body function instead of very specifically on symptoms and organs [like Western medicine],” Yuan, who is also the editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Chinese Medicine, told FoxNews.com.

For this study, researchers combined TCM’s traditional principles with modern medicine by identifying herbs that have proven effective in treating people with diabetes.

In a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study, 389 participants with impaired glucose tolerance (a risk factor for Type 2 diabetes) were tested every three months to monitor whether they had developed diabetes – or if they had experienced a restoration of normal glucose tolerance (NGT), meaning they were no longer at risk for diabetes.

Half of the participants were treated with a Chinese herbal mixture called Tianqi. Tianqi is a capsule containing 10 Chinese herbal medicines including Astragali Radix and Coptidis Rhizoma, which have been previously shown to improve glucose levels. All subjects received dietary education and were advised to maintain their usual physical fitness routines.

Overall, the study found that Tianqi appeared to reduce the risk of diabetes among study participants by 32.1 percent, compared to the placebo group. At the end of the study, 125 subjects (63.13 percent) in the Tianqi group had achieved normal glucose tolerance, compared to only 89 (46.6 percent) in the placebo group. Among the participants who went on to develop diabetes, 56 subjects (29.32 percent) were in the placebo group, compared to only 36 (18.18 percent) in the Tianqi group.

There were no reported severe adverse side effects from Tianqi.

“We are excited about this,” Yuan said. “It’s an advantage that we did not observe bad side effects.”

Furthermore, researchers believe Chinese medicine may be almost as effective as Western drugs used to tread diabetes.

“The data from our study showed that Chinese medicine has comparable effects ,” Yuan said.

However, Yuan noted that because the study was conducted in China, further research may be needed in order to prove the effectiveness of Tianqi for patients in other countries. Future research will also need to focus on quality control issues surrounding the use of herbal medicines in clinical studies, Yuan said.

“It’s not easy to do controlled trials of herbal medicine and this study did it and showed promising effects,” Yuan said. “But we need to do more studies with the possibility that in five to seven years TCM has better utility in the U.S.”

Source: Fox News

 

 

Indo-American leads possible treatment for diabetes

In a significant discovery, a team of researchers led by an Indian-American has found that a single gene dysfunction in mice results in developing fasting hypoglycemia, one of the major symptoms of Type 2 diabetes.

The discovery by researchers, led by Prof. Bellur S Prabhakar, focused on a gene MADD for the study and may enable a new potential treatment for diabetes patients.
If MADD is not functioning properly, insulin is not released into the bloodstream to regulate blood sugar levels, said Prabhakar, professor and head of microbiology and immunology at University of Illinois at Chicago.

In previous work, Prabhakar isolated several genes from human beta cells, including MADD, which is also involved in certain cancers. Small genetic variations found among thousands of human subjects revealed that a mutation in MADD was strongly associated with Type 2 diabetes in Europeans and Han Chinese.

People with this mutation had high blood glucose and problems of insulin secretion – the “hallmarks of type 2 diabetes”, Prabhakar said.

But it was unclear how the mutation was causing the symptoms, or whether it caused them on its own or in concert with other genes associated with Type 2 diabetes.

To study the role of MADD in diabetes, Prabhakar and his colleagues developed a mouse model in which the MADD gene was deleted from the insulin-producing beta cells. All such mice had elevated blood glucose levels, which the researchers found was due to insufficient release of insulin.

“We didn’t see any insulin resistance in their cells, but it was clear that the beta cells were not functioning properly,” Prabhakar said.

Examination of the beta cells revealed that they were packed with insulin. “The cells were producing plenty of insulin, they just weren’t secreting it,” he said.

Prabhakar said that the work shows that Type 2 diabetes can be directly caused by the loss of a properly functioning MADD gene alone.

“Without the gene, insulin can’t leave the beta cells, and Blood sugar levels are chronically high,” he said.

In the future, the researchers plan to look into effects of a drug that allows for the secretion of insulin in MADD-deficient beta cells.

“If this drug works to reverse the deficits associated with a defective MADD gene in the beta cells of our model mice, it may have potential for treating people with this mutation who have an insulin-secretion defect and/or type 2 diabetes,” he said.

Type 2 diabetes affects roughly 8 per cent of Americans and over 366 million people worldwide. It can cause serious complications, including cardiovascular disease, kidney failure, loss of limbs and blindness.

Source: The Sen Times

Diabetes Drug Won’t Help Obese Kids Keep Off Weight

Few children who become obese are able to lose and keep off weight with diet and exercise alone, leading some doctors to prescribe drugs, such as the diabetes drug metformin, to treat childhood obesity. However, a new study suggests that metformin may not help kids and teens without diabetes lose weight over the long term.

The study, which reviewed information from previous research, found no evidence that children and teens who took the drug lost more weight after one year than those who did not take the drug.

While some adolescents who took the drug did experience short-term weight loss (six months or less), the effect was modest, and it’s not clear whether such limited weight loss would actually improve their health, the researchers said. [Lose Weight Smartly: 7 Little-Known Tricks That Shave Pounds]

Given the current evidence, metformin has not been shown to be superior to other weight-loss treatments for kids, such as diet and exercise, the researchers said.

“Unfortunately, this drug is not going to be the answer,” said study researcher Marian McDonagh, of Oregon Health & Science University. Overall, the drug does not appear to provide enough weight reduction for children to experience meaningful health benefits in the long term, McDonagh said.

Still, it’s possible that certain groups of children, such as those who are very obese, may benefit from taking the drug. A large study is needed to identify these groups, the researchers said.

The study analyzed information from 14 previous studies (eight in the United States and others in Canada, Australia, Mexico, Europe, Iran and Turkey), which included a total of 946 children ages 10 to 16 who did not have diabetes. The children’s body mass indices (BMIs) ranged from 26 to 41. In most studies, children who took metformin also engaged in lifestyle changes aimed at helping them lose weight.

On average, children who took metformin for six months achieved a 3.6 percent greater reduction in their BMI compared with those who practiced lifestyle changes alone.

However, studies in adults suggest that, in order for a weight-loss treatment to lead to meaningful improvements in health down the road, it needs to reduce BMI by 5 to 10 percent, McDonagh said.

Children in the studies who took metformin for a year saw about the same decrease in BMI as those who practiced lifestyle changes alone. And after one year, both groups started to slip back to their original weight.

The researchers would like to see more studies on weight-loss treatments that involve a child’s entire family. It’s possible that family-based interventions may help children lose more weight — whether they are taking a drug or not — than interventions that don’t consider the child’s family, McDonagh said.

Metformin is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat children and adults with Type 2 diabetes.

Source: Fresh news