Diabetes is a common disease that affects how our body uses sugar for energy. There are different types, and one of the most common is type 2 diabetes.
Recently, researchers at Lund University have discovered how this type of diabetes might start. Their findings were shared in a journal called Nature Communications.
To understand their research, knowing a bit about genes and epigenetics is helpful. Our genes, which we get from our parents, usually don’t change much during our lives.
But there’s something called epigenetics, which can change how our genes work. These changes are influenced by things like what we eat, how much we exercise, and even how old we are.
The team at Lund University, led by Professor Charlotte Ling, has been studying epigenetics and type 2 diabetes. They found out that changes in epigenetics can actually play a part in causing type 2 diabetes.
This is a big deal because until now, it wasn’t clear if these changes were a cause or just something that happened after someone already had diabetes.
The researchers looked closely at the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas of people who had donated their bodies to science. They compared the cells of 25 people who had type 2 diabetes with 75 people who didn’t.
What they found was pretty interesting: there were over 5,000 spots in the DNA of these cells that were different in people with diabetes.
Even more interesting, these same changes were found in people who had higher than normal blood sugar levels but didn’t have diabetes yet. This suggests that these epigenetic changes could be a warning sign of diabetes developing.
One particular gene, called RHOT1, stood out in their research. This gene is involved in making insulin, which is the hormone that controls our blood sugar.
The researchers discovered that in people with type 2 diabetes, this gene wasn’t working the way it should. They even did an experiment with rat cells and found that when they turned off the RHOT1 gene, the cells didn’t make as much insulin.
The researchers hope that their work can lead to new ways to predict and prevent type 2 diabetes.
For example, they’re looking into developing a blood test that could identify people at risk of getting diabetes before they actually get sick. This would be based on looking for those epigenetic changes they discovered.
Lifestyle factors, like eating unhealthy food, not exercising enough, and getting older, can increase the risk of getting type 2 diabetes. These same factors also affect our epigenetics. So, the findings from this study are really important.
They could help us figure out new ways to stop diabetes from developing. This might involve personalized advice on lifestyle changes or even new treatments that can fix the changes in how genes work.
Charlotte Ling and her team are excited about the possibilities. Understanding epigenetics could be the key to stopping type 2 diabetes before it starts.
This research could be a big step in understanding and treating this common disease.
If you care about diabetes, please read studies about a cure for type 2 diabetes, and these vegetables could protect against kidney damage in diabetes.
For more information about diabetes, please see recent studies about bone drug that could lower risk of type 2 diabetes, and results showing eating more eggs linked to higher risk of type 2 diabetes.
The research findings can be found in Nature Communications.
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