Category Archives: Diabetes

People who undergo gastric bypass surgery are more likely to experience a remission of their diabetes than patients who receive a gastric sleeve or intensive management of diet and exercise, according to a new study. Bypass surgery had already shown better results for diabetes than other weight-loss methods in the short term, but the new research followed patients for five years.

We knew that surgery had a powerful effect on diabetes, says Philip Schauer of the Bariatric & Metabolic Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. What this study says is that the effect of surgery is durable. The results were published online February 15 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study followed 134 people with type 2 diabetes for five years in a head-to-head comparison of weight-loss methods. At the end of that time, two of 38 patients who only followed intensive diet and exercise plans were no longer in need of insulin to manage blood sugar levels. For comparison, 11 of 47 patients who had a gastric sleeve, which reduces the size of the stomach, and 14 of 49 who underwent gastric bypass, a procedure that both makes the stomach smaller and shortens digestion time, did not need the insulin anymore. In general, patients who had been diabetic for fewer than eight years were more likely to be cured, Schauer says.

Even those surgical patients who still needed to take insulin had greater weight loss and lower median glucose levels than others in the study. This study was also one of the few to show that bariatric surgery could help those with only mild obesity, defined as a body mass index between 27 and 34. How bariatric surgery might improve diabetes is still unknown, but scientists have pointed to effects on the bodys metabolism (SN: 8/24/13, p. 14) and gut microbes (SN: 9/5/15, p. 16).

Over five years, gastric bypass patients showed bettercontrol ofblood sugar levels than patients whoused a gastric sleeve or medical management such as intensive diet and exercise plans.

The same research team had published similar results at one and three years after surgery, but few studies looked further, says Kristoffel Dumon, a bariatric surgeon with the University of Pennsylvania Health System in Philadelphia. The criticism of bariatric research has been that there are no good long-term results. With weight-loss surgery, you often see rapid initial results, but you want to see that to a five-year time point.

Dumon also notes that the patients who received only intensive medical therapy did not report an improvement in their quality of life, and their emotional well-being worsened. People in the surgical group reported improvements in quality of life, but not in emotional well-being, a finding that Schauer says has more to do with stress management and other characteristics that wouldnt necessarily be affected by surgery.

Schauer hopes to have even longer-term data in the future. His team will combine their results with those from similar research at three other U.S. sites with the goal of following patients for up to 10 years.

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Gastric bypass controls diabetes long term better than other ... - Science News

When the doctor tells someone they have diabetes, the first thing that often goes through their mind is all the different foods they will not be able to eat as they work to lower their A1C blood glucose level.

This experience is common, but does not have to be true, once you have attended Kitchen Creations, a free diabetes cooking school. New Mexico State Universitys College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences is offering an evening cooking school in Valencia County beginning Thursday, March 9.

This is the first time in many years that we have offered Kitchen Creations in the evening, said Laura Bittner, NMSUs Cooperative Extension Service family and consumer science agent in Valencia County. In recent years, our greatest request has been for morning classes. Hopefully, this evening class, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., will give people, who have missed out because of their traditional work schedule, an opportunity to attend.

The classes will be Thursdays, March 9, 16, 23 and 30, at Peralta Memorial United Methodist Church, 25 Wesley Road in Peralta. Registration deadline is Wednesday, March 1. Call 565-3002 to register.

Many people with diabetes are not sure what to do to improve their health, especially when it comes to food. Kitchen Creation goes beyond simply providing nutrition information to engaging participants in activities so they can immediately apply what they are learning. said Cassandra Vanderpool, registered dietitian and NMSU Extension diabetes coordinator of the program that is provided by New Mexico Department of Health Prevention and Control Program and NMSU.

Kitchen Creations is a series of four once-a-week, three-hour classes with an informal education component, as well as hands-on experience preparing delicious recipes that are low in sugar, salt and fat.

This is a fun, educational class that makes understanding and managing diabetes much easier, Bittner said of the class she team-teaches with diabetes educator Cathy Chavez. Its scary when you are first diagnosed. The program explains things very simply and in a very comfortable environment.

During the second half of the class everyone gets involved in making a meal with a combined total of 45 carbohydrates, which is a good range for many individuals with diabetes.

What is exciting is the food not only tastes good, its also incredibly filling, Bittner said. Its really about managing portion sizes and making sure you have a balance of carbohydrates and proteins in each meal or snack.

The best part of the class is the medical results.

Several months after attending the Kitchen Creations cooking school, a participant called and told me she had just returned from the doctor, and her A1C had dropped, Bittner said. She attributed the improvement to the changes she and her husband, who also attended the classes, had made in their cooking and eating habits as a result of what they had learned in our classes.

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Kitchen Creations, free diabetes cooking school, now offered in the evening - Valencia County News Bulletin

It may be possible to slow the progression of type 1 diabetes, according to a new pilot study that used an experimental therapy that centers on the immune system.

In the new study, researchers in Sweden tested a new method to train the immune system to stop attacking the body's own insulin-producing cells, according to the findings published today (Feb. 15) in the New England Journal of Medicine. With only six participants, the study was small, but experts called these early results exciting.

In people with type I diabetes, the immune system mistakenly recognizes certain proteins in beta cellsas foreign invaders and wages a war against them. Once the beta cells have been killed, the pancreas produces little or no insulin, the hormone that regulates how the body absorbs sugar from the blood to use for energy. As a result, patients need to follow lifelong treatments such as insulin injections to keep their blood sugar levels at normal ranges. [9 Healthy Habits You Can Do in 1 Minute (Or Less)]

This destruction of beta cells doesn't happen overnight, however. Although the majority of them are gone by the time someone is diagnosed, some cells manage to dodge the attacks and continue to produce some insulin. That's why several research teams have been working on finding ways to rescue the remaining cells, or delay their destruction in people who have been recently diagnosed with the condition.

In the new study, the researchers injected a protein normally found on beta cells directly into the patients' lymph nodes.

"This method has shown the best efficacy so far," at slowing the disease's progression, said Dr. Johnny Ludvigsson, senior professor of pediatrics at Linkping University and the study's lead investigator. "But we have to be cautious. The number of patients is small."

If confirmed in larger trials, the therapy could bring a number of benefits to patients. The ability to make insulin secretion, even if only at very low levels, dramatically decreases people's risk of complications, such as episodes of dangerously low blood sugar levels, Ludvigsson told Live Science.

The small amount of insulin that the patients in the study could produce would also make it easier for the patients to maintain a good blood sugar balance, improving their quality of life. It would also reduce their risk of long-term complications of the disease, such as heart attack, stroke, neuropathy, kidney problems and eye disease.

"These are exciting results," said Dr. Lawrence Steinman, a professor of pediatrics and neurological sciences at Stanford University, who was not involved with the study. Steinman echoed Ludvigsson's warning that the study is small, and said that trials with more people and which include a control group of patients who are given a placebo are needed to confirm the findings.

The injections that the researchers gave to the patients in the study contained a protein called GAD, which is normally found in the beta cells. Ludvigsson and his colleagues injected this protein into the patients' lymph nodes near the groin. Lymph nodes contain many immune cells, and the idea behind the treatment is that exposing the body's immune cells to larger amounts of GAD than they normally encounter will cause the immune cells to become more tolerant of GAD, and halt their attack on it.

The participants in the study were ages 20 to 22, and all had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes within the last six months. The researchers followed up with the patients six to 15 months after the treatment, and found that the functioning of the pancreas had not declined, as expected in the typical course of the disease, but remained stable.

Previously, Ludvigsson's team had tried the same treatment, but had injected the protein under the skin. The new results suggest that an injection directly into the lymph nodes better exposes immune cells to the self-antigen.

"With a much lower dose, we got a very strong desired effect on the immune system," Ludvigsson said.

The team is now planning to repeat the study in a larger number of people, which would take a few years, Ludvigsson said.

Although these results are far too early to be applied to patients, they lend promising evidence to a relatively new line of research that aims to modify the immune system with high precision to treat or perhaps even cure type 1 diabetes.

"A few approaches are in clinical trials, but nothing is yet on the market," Steinman said. "Antigen-based therapy [which was used in the new study] is a sought-after approach, but only a few in the world are attempting this."

In his own work, Steinman has focused on another protein, called proinsulin, which also becomes a target of the immune system in people with type 1 diabetes.

In a 2012 clinical trial with 80 people, Steinman and his team injected participants with a chunk of DNA-encoding proinsulin, in an attempt to desensitize the immune system to proinsulin. The researchers found that the function of the pancreas not only stabilized, but actually improved. It is possible, Steinman said, that some beta cells somehow hide from the immune attacks by going into hibernation, and that once the attacks are eased, they recover and resume function. Plans for the next trial are ongoing, Steinman said.

An immune therapy for type 1 diabetes in the future might combine some of the various approaches that different research teams have tried.

"So far, almost all studies have been performed testing one drug at a time, and they have not been effective enough," Ludvigsson said. "My opinion is that we need a combination of different approaches. For example, different drugs, given in a planned scheme, as is done in oncology. And not until just recently has that idea started to become accepted."

Originally published on Live Science.

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Experimental Therapy May Slow Type 1 Diabetes - Live Science

Men's Health

How to Reverse Diabetes Men's Health "Diabetes mellitus" comes from the Greek word for siphon, referring to the excess urine that's a key symptom of the disease, and a Latin word for sweetness, referring to the sugar the body is trying desperately to unload. History doesn't tell us who ...

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How to Reverse Diabetes - Men's Health

Home Diabetes Diabetes linked to DNA: Study

Researchers have found a link between certain variations in DNA and the development of type 2 diabetes that may explain why some individuals get the disease while those with similar lifestyles do not.

A team of scientists has published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, stating that some genetic defects associated with diabetes change the way certain cells in the pancreas read their genes. This is the first bit of evidence that many of the DNA changes associated with the development of type 2 diabetes are linked with a DNA reading molecule called Regulatory Factor X, or RFX. This new research shows that the ability of RFX to bind with islets in the pancreas is affected by the DNA changes characteristic of diabetes, resulting in reduced cell function. Islets are responsible for the cells that create hormones like insulin and glucagonthe hormones necessary for the management and regulation of blood sugar.

Dr. Stephen C.J. Parker, a senior co-author of the study, explained We have found that many of the subtle DNA spelling differences that increase risk of type 2 diabetes can appear to disrupt a common regulatory grammar in islet cells. RFX is probably unable to read the misspelled words, and this disruption of regulatory grammar plays a significant role in the genetic risk of type 2 diabetes.

To conduct their research, the team examined DNA from islet samples gathered from 112 participants. Differences were characterized in DNA sequences, the modification and packaging of DNA by nongenetic factors, and levels of gene expression that allowed scientists to determine how often a gene had been read. Following these multiple points, researchers were able to track the effects of RFX and other transcription factors left on unpackaged DNA.

This research has linked the risk of developing type 2 diabetes to a genetic factor, helping to explain why some people may be more prone than others who lead the same lifestyle. Researchers hope this new information may lead to the development of more personalized treatment methods for diabetes.

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Diabetes linked to DNA: Study - Bel Marra Health

PHOTO PROVIDED A class like this one to help residents at risk of diabetes will begin a 25-class series on March 2 at the Bellefonte YMCA.

BELLEFONTE It is one of the most slowly progressing diseases that often falls under the radar, but the YMCA of Centre County is starting a program to help prevent it.

Starting Thursday, March 2, from 6 to 7 p.m. at the Bellefonte YMCA, the YMCA of Centre County will be offering a diabetes prevention program that will consist of 25 class sessions throughout the year that will focus on topics that are crucial when it comes to diabetes prevention, such as nutrition and physical activity, according to Naomi Engelken, community health and wellness director at the State College YMCA.

Its really looking at preventing it from even happening, because we find that about one in three adults has prediabetes, meaning that theyre at high risk for developing type 2 diabetes, Engelken said. A program like this can reduce their risk of type 2 diabetes by about 58 percent.

Currently, there are more than 86 million adults in the United States who have prediabetes, and nine out of 10 are not aware that they have it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Since last year, the YMCA of Centre County has been working toward implementing the diabetes prevention program, which started about 18 years ago as a study done by the CDC and the National Institutes of Health, Engelken said. Today, more than 200 YMCAs across the United States have implemented the program.

To qualify for the program, individuals must be at least 18 or older and have a BMI over 25 or be considered overweight, Engelken explained. The YMCA is also requesting that interested participants also get a blood test from their physician, as there is a certain blood value that indicates a high risk for developing type 2 diabetes.

There will be a cost to participate in the program, which will depend on a person-to-person basis, and the YMCA does offer financial assistance for the program, Engelken said. Most participants will receive an incentive to join the program, so if a participant is not a YMCA member, they will receive a YMCA membership for the duration of their participation in the program.

Engelken said that a typical class will consist of reviewing topics discussed in the previous class, looking at the weekly tracking of physical activity and nutrition, tracking weight, and afterward, participants will move onto the next educational topic. For the first four months of the program, there will be 16 weekly sessions, and the remaining nine will taper off into monthly maintenance sessions. Each session in the program will be an hour long, with sessions following the March 2 one being held on a rolling basis once at least eight people register for a session.

There are two main goals of the program to help individuals reduce their risk of diabetes. One is to reduce body weight by seven percent over the course of the program, and the other is to increase physical activity to an optimal level of 150 minutes per week, Engelken said.

The program will be unlike others and aims to have a lasting impact on participants lifestyles.

Because its a smaller environment, you have a supportive environment, you really get to know the people in the class, and it really allows you to kind of take control of your health versus someone leading you through an exercise program, Engelken said.

She added that the program will really focus on teaching individuals why they need to maintain these types of things so that they can have a healthy lifestyle, and it will allow them to carry on that lifestyle beyond the programs duration.

After the YMCA finishes with this years program, Engelken said that it plans to continue to help prevent diabetes in the community. The YMCA of Centre County has been working closely with the national YMCA office and they have a implementation program set for at least the next five years.

Theres no reason that so many people should be suffering from a disease like this when its preventable with relatively easy measures, Engelken said.

For program registration and/or inquiries about the program and financial assistance, please contact Naomi Engelken at either 814-237-7717 or nengelken@ymcaocc.org. People should register by Feb. 28.

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YMCA starting program to help residents with diabetes | News ... - Lock Haven Express

Published Feb 15, 2017 at 11:08 am (Updated Feb 15, 2017)

Chris Gildea, with sons Austin and Henry, volunteering at an American Diabetes Association event. Photo provided by Katie Gildea.

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By Meghan Byers

SPARTA For the Gildea family, diabetes isn't just a disease; it's a daily battle. Sparta residents Katie and Chris Gildea, along with their two young sons, ages 3 and 7, will volunteer this June at the American Diabetes Association's upcoming Skylands Tour de Cure, an event which helps fund diabetes research. Chris Gildea, who has type 1 diabetes, has volunteered with the ADA for 10 years. This year, the Gildea family plans to help out at each Tour de Cure event in New Jersey.

"It's a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week job, living with diabetes," said Katie Gildea. "Diabetes robs you of your ability to lead a care-free life."

The Tour de Cure is the ADA's biggest fundraiser. The Skylands event, which will be held at Waterloo Village, will include both a cycling portion and "fun run & walk" for non-cyclists.

While raising money for a cure is a top priority, Katie Gildea believes that education is equally important, especially when it comes to confronting the social stigma often associated with diabetes.

"A lot of people don't realize that Type 1 diabetes is separate from Type 2 diabetes, and that anyone can have it. A lot of people think it's a choice," she said. "People always tell my husband, 'You look so healthy.' But diabetes doesn't look a certain way. It can affect anyone of any age, any lifestyle."

Chris Gildea, who works at Becton-Dickinson, a company that provides diabetes care products, enjoys an athletic lifestyle despite his disease. "My kids think he's a superhero," said Katie Gildea. "He always tells them never give up, never surrender, and that's how we are with this never give up, never surrender."

According to the ADA, 1.4 million Americans are diagnosed with diabetes each year, and approximately 1.25 million Americans have type 1 diabetes. In 2010, diabetes was the seventh leading cause of death in the United States.

"When you have something like this that can affect your children," said Katie Gildea, "you'll do anything in your power to rid the world of it."

The Skylands Tour de Cure will take place June 4 at Waterloo Village in Stanhope, with a kickoff event taking place on March 23 at Czig Meister Brewery in Hackettstown.

More information and event registration is available at http://www.diabetes.org/skylands, and anyone interested in volunteering can email Katie Gildea at katiehug@hotmail.com.

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Sparta family raises diabetes awareness - The Sparta Independent

Researchers have found that abdominal fat may either cause or relate to the cause of type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease. People who are genetically at a greater risk of having a higher waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index are likely to have an increased risk of developing these conditions.

New research detailing these findings was published in JAMA.

Body mass index (BMI) is used to measure body fat based on height and weight, and it is a common method of working out whether a person is overweight or obese. Obesity is a major risk factor for both type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease.

Regardless of BMI, body fat distribution can vary from one person to the next. Some people carry more fat around their visceral organs, called abdominal adiposity (fat), while others carry fat on their thighs and hips.

Previous observational studies have indicated that abdominal fat is associated with type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease. However, it remains unclear whether these associations represent a causal relationship.

Dr. Sekar Kathiresan, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and colleagues conducted a study to investigate whether being genetically inclined to have an increased waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) adjusted for BMI (a measure of abdominal fat) was linked to cardiometabolic traits (such as lipids, glucose, insulin, and systolic blood pressure), and type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease.

The team gathered data from four genome-wide association studies conducted between 2007 and 2015, which included up to 322,154 participants, and individual-level, cross-sectional data from the UK Biobank collected between 2007 and 2011, which included data from a further 111,986 people. Estimates for cardiometabolic traits were based on this combined data set.

Analysis did show that being genetically predisposed to a higher WHR adjusted for BMI was connected with increased levels of quantitative risk factors, including lipids, glucose, insulin, and systolic blood pressure, and a greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease.

Kathiresan and co-authors say that the results permit several conclusions. Firstly, the findings agree with previous studies that associate abdominal fat with cardiometabolic disease.

Secondly, the findings suggest that the distribution of body fat, beyond BMI measurement, could partly explain the disparity in risk of type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease that is reported in both individuals and subpopulations.

"For example, increased abdominal adiposity at a given BMI has been proposed as an explanation for the excess risk of coronary heart disease observed in South Asians," the authors explain. "Similarly, greater abdominal adipose tissue at a given BMI has been proposed to underlie the excess risk of coronary heart disease at a given BMI among men compared with women," they add.

Lastly, WHR adjusted for BMI may lead to novel therapeutic strategies for the reduction of abdominal fat and decreasing the risk of type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease.

"Although a substantial focus of drug development has been toward therapeutics to reduce overall adiposity, there has been little effort toward the development of therapies that modify body fat distribution to reduce abdominal adiposity," say the authors. Kathiresan and team conclude:

"These results provide evidence supportive of a causal association between abdominal adiposity and the development of type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease."

Limitations of the study include the fact that there is a small chance that the findings from the study represent a "shared genetic basis" between WHR adjusted for BMI and coronary heart disease, instead of a causal relationship.

Learn how obesity may lead to heart attacks and stroke.

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Abdominal fat may cause type 2 diabetes, heart disease - Medical News Today

Researchers have discovered a way to reprogram mouse liver cells into precursor pancreatic cells by changing the expression of a single gene. They suggest that the finding is an important step toward showing that reprogramming liver cells might offer a way forward for the treatment of type 1 diabetes in humans.

The team - led by researchers from the Max Delbrck Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, Germany - reports the study in the journal Nature Communications.

Diabetes is a chronic disease that develops either when the body cannot make enough insulin, or when it cannot effectively use the insulin that it does make. Insulin is a hormone that regulates blood sugar, or glucose, and it helps to convert glucose from food into energy for cells.

Uncontrolled diabetes leads to high blood sugar, or hyperglycemia, which over time causes serious damage to many parts of the body, including the heart, blood vessels, nerves, eyes, and kidneys.

In the United States, an estimated 29.1 million people have diabetes, including 8.1 million who are undiagnosed.

The most common type of diabetes is type 2, in which the body cannot use insulin effectively. Type 1 diabetes, in which the body does not make enough insulin, accounts for around 5 percent of diabetes cases in adults.

The new study is likely to interest researchers developing treatments for type 1 diabetes. In people with type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas.

Researchers in regenerative medicine are exploring ways to generate new populations of pancreatic beta cells as a possible avenue for the treatment of type 1 diabetes.

Fast facts about type 1 diabetes

Learn more about type 1 diabetes

The new study concerns a method called cell reprogramming, in which it is possible to convert one type of cell into another type of cell, by tweaking genes.

An obvious source of cells for reprogramming into insulin-producing beta cells might be other types of cell in the pancreas.

In their study paper, the researchers mention other research that shows such pancreatic cells display a high degree of the necessary "cellular plasticity."

However, the researchers chose to focus on liver cells because, from a clinical perspective, they offer important advantages over pancreatic cells; for example, they are more accessible and abundant.

They also cite studies that have partially corrected hyperglycemia in diabetic mice by reprogramming liver cells into pancreatic beta cells.

The new study shows how just by changing the expression of a single gene called TGIF2, the team was able to coax mouse liver cells to take on a less specialized state and then stimulate them to develop into cells with pancreatic features.

When the researchers transplanted the modified cells into diabetic mice, the animals' blood sugar levels improved, suggesting the cells were behaving in a way similar to pancreatic beta cells.

The researchers identified TGIF2 (Three-Amino-acid-Loop-Extension homeobox TG-interacting factor 2) by running gene expression profiling tests on immature liver and pancreas cells isolated from mouse embryos as the cells differentiated toward their particular cell fates.

They found that at a particular differentiation branchpoint, the expression of TGIF2 changes in opposite directions as the cells commit to either liver or pancreatic fates.

The authors note that their study shows that "TGIF2 is a developmental regulator of pancreas versus liver fate decision," and when expressed in adult mouse liver cells, it suppresses the transcription program for liver cells and induces a subset of pancreatic genes.

There is still a lot of work to do to investigate whether the results with mice translate to humans. The team has already started working on human liver cells.

"There are differences between mice and humans, which we still have to overcome. But we are well on the path to developing a 'proof of concept' for future therapies."

Senior author Dr. Francesca M. Spagnoli, Max Delbrck Center

Learn how type 1 diabetes kills some insulin-producing cells but not others.

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Type 1 diabetes: Reprogramming liver cells may lead to new treatments - Medical News Today

Endocrinology Advisor

How Does Psoriatic Arthritis Affect Diabetes Risk? Endocrinology Advisor The prevalence of diabetes is higher in patients with psoriatic arthritis (PsA), with greater PsA activity correlating with a higher risk of developing the disease, according to recent research published in The Journal of Rheumatology. Psoriatic ...

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How Does Psoriatic Arthritis Affect Diabetes Risk? - Endocrinology Advisor