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A Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center study on dietary fructose has provided more evidence of the potential for controversy when researchers target products affecting consumer spending and corporate profits. This time, researchers are on the receiving end of sharp criticism from the Corn Refiners Association after reporting that fructose rapidly caused liver damage even without weight gain with primates.The researchers acknowledged when they released the study results that the role of dietary fructose in the development of obesity and fatty liver diseases “remains controversial.” Researchers determined that over a six-week study period, liver damage more than doubled in the monkeys...

A new study shows patients newly diagnosed with type-2 diabetes fare better when they are given a 3-drug combination compared to conventional therapy with one anti-diabetic medication. The finding that comes from researchers at University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio was presented June 22 at the 73rd Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association in Chicago.Ralph DeFronzo, M.D., chief of the Diabetes Division in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio presented findings from a two-year study that included 134 participants at the University Health System's Texas Diabetes Institute.The...

Enlarge Image Burning fat in the cold. White fat cells sense cold directly, and release energy to warm up. Credit: Biophoto Associates/Science Source Transforming fat cells into calorie-burning machines may sound like the ultimate form of weight control, but the idea is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Unexpectedly, some fat cells directly sense dropping temperatures and release their energy as heat, according to a new study; that ability might be harnessed to treat obesity and diabetes, researchers suggest. Fat is known to help protect animals from the cold—and not only by acting as insulation. In the early 1990s,...

Obese mice were given the drug Amlexanox lost weight. (credit: University of Michigan)ANN ARBOR (WWJ) - Could a drug used to treat canker sores be a miracle weight-loss solution? Researchers at University of Michigan are working to find out.Back in February, U-M researchers discovered that mice given the prescription drug, Amlexanox, lost weight without diet or exercise. Now, Dr. Elif Oral, an associate professor of internal medicine at U-M’s Metabolism, Endocrinology & Diabetes (MEND) division, is beginning the first human study to determine whether the drug will have the same effect in people.“The weight loss together in improved glucose metabolism...

A new study in Bioactive Carbohydrates and Dietary Fibre suggests that taking a dietary supplement called psyllium can help control blood sugar in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus even if they are taking antidiabetic medications and using a restricted diet. Psyllium is a plant whose seeds are used commercially to produce mucilage which is is a thick, gluey material full of a polar glycoprotein and an exopolysaccharide.  Mucilage is found high in flaxseeds. The double blind, placebo controlled clinical trial led by N. Mark and colleagues from Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC shows that taking 3.4 grams...

The controversial diabetes drug Avandia should stay on the market for now, with relaxed restrictions on its use, Food and Drug Administration advisers said on Thursday.The FDA has been reconsidering its approval of Avandia, which was the world’s No. 1 diabetes drug until research showed it could raise the risk of heart attacks and other heart dangers. Since then, its use has been heavily restricted and prescriptions have plummeted, and the FDA wanted to know if it was worth even keeping the drug on the market.The agency’s expert panel of advisers said the data is clearly confusing and they were...

Obesity surgery worked much better at reducing and even reversing diabetes than medication and lifestyle changes in one of the most rigorous studies of its kind. But the researchers and others warn that possible serious complications need to be considered. The yearlong study indicates that the most common weight-loss surgery, gastric bypass, can effectively treat diabetes in patients with mild to moderate obesity — about 50 to 70 pounds overweight, the researchers reported Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Other studies have shown the operation can reverse diabetes in severely obese patients, although sometimes the disease comes...

A new study by scientists at Sahlgrenska Academy, Sweden, shows that humans have two different types of brown fat cells, not one as previously thought.Newly identified type of brown adipocyte (University of Gothenburg) According to scientists, the body’s brown fat cells play a key role in the development of obesity and diabetes. Unlike white fat cells, which store the body’s surplus energy in the form of fat, brown fat cells have the unique property of being able to burn energy and turn it into heat.The new research published in the journal Nature Medicine reveals that people have at least two...

In the 2008 Pixar movie WALL.E, humans so clogged up the earth with garbage they had to move to spaceships. Motorized chairs ferried the obese blobs portraying people of the future, who sipped liquids from massive cups and sat mesmerized by video screens. It was both funny and scary in its assessment of America’s throw-away, fast-food culture where convenience is everything and self-control and direction outsourced to technology. At the time of the movie it was part of an emerging chorus of voices decrying Americans’ growing girth. Five years later it is almost impossible to go a day without seeing...

Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers have discovered that a particular type of protein (hormone) found in fat cells helps regulate how glucose (blood sugar) is controlled and metabolized (used for energy) in the liver. Using experimental models and state-of-the-art technology, the scientists found that switching off this protein leads to better control of glucose production from the liver, revealing a potential new target that may be used to treat type 2 diabetes and other metabolic diseases. The study appears online in the May 7, 2013 issue of Cell Metabolism.

Simple Tool Stratifies Mortality Risk in Type 2 Diabetes Marlene Busko May 13, 2013  Researchers have created an online mortality-risk calculator for patients with type 2 diabetes, which stratifies patients into low, medium, or high risk of dying from any cause within 2 years. By plugging in values for 9 readily available patient characteristics — age, body mass index (BMI), diastolic blood pressure, LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio, antihypertensive treatment, and insulin therapy — a physician can quickly determine whether a patient has a high risk for death. "The novelty and the importance of this study is that we provide...

Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have made a discovery in neuroscience that could offer a long-lasting solution to eating disorders such as obesity. It was previously thought that the nerve cells in the brain associated with appetite regulation were generated entirely during an embryo's development in the womb and therefore their numbers were fixed for life. But research published today in the Journal of Neuroscience has identified a population of stem cells capable of generating new appetite-regulating neurons in the brains of young and adult rodents. Obesity has reached epidemic proportions globally. More than 1.4 billion adults...

A new diabetes drug that hit the market in the past week boasts it can drop your glucose levels and flush out "guilty" calories every time you use the bathroom. Experts say that every time the patient urinates, out goes all the unwanted sugar and calories. Doctors say this drug could even help prevent Type 2 diabetes. KVUE's sister station KENS went behind closed doors at the Veterans Affairs hospital to witness clinical trials for other drugs similar to Invokana. Last Friday, the FDA approved Invokana, a drug experts are hailing as a game changer for Type 2 diabetes treatment....

U. MISSOURI (US) — Vitamin D supplements can help obese children and teens control their blood-sugar levels, which may help lower their risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.“By increasing vitamin D intake alone, we got a response that was nearly as powerful as what we have seen using a prescription drug,” says Catherine Peterson, associate professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri. “We saw a decrease in insulin levels, which means better glucose control, despite no changes in body weight, dietary intake, or physical activity.”For the study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers...

More than 350 million people worldwide are believed to have diabetes, and for years health experts have debated on what the exact driver of the illness has been. While sugar intake has been viewed as a culprit in many eyes, scientists have long refuted that conjecture and attributed the global health crisis to too much overall food intake and obesity. But a new finding by three California universities – Stanford, UC-Berkeley and UCSF – suggests through compelling evidence that Type 2 diabetes is being largely driven by the rising consumption of sugary foods and drinks. This evidence comes in the...

Question marks have been raised over whether the levels of bisphenol A (BPA) that people are routinely exposed to are high enough to cause the diseases that have been linked to the controversial chemical. An analysis by Justin Teeguarden, a systems toxicologist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, US, makes the bold claim that many of the animal tests that demonstrate that BPA may be a contributory factor in diseases like type 2 diabetes, obesity and heart disease have been elucidated using concentrations much greater than those ever found in humans.‘The old saw that correlation is not causation may hold...

Like the sun, insulin levels rise and fall in a daily rhythm. Disrupting that cycle may contribute to obesity and diabetes, a new study suggests. Many body systems follow a daily clock known as a circadian rhythm. Body temperature, blood pressure and the release of many hormones are on circadian timers. But until now, no one had shown that insulin — a hormone that helps control how the body uses sugars for energy — also has a daily cycle. Working with mice, researchers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville have found that rodents are more sensitive to insulin’s effects at certain...

Diets lean on meat and rich in healthy fats like olive oil were most effective at promoting weight loss and lowering blood sugar among people with diabetes in a review of evidence from the last 10 years. Benefits were also seen with diets low in carbohydrates, high in protein or low in simple sugars. "If you look at different types of diets, these four can improve various aspects of diabetes control," lead author Dr. Olubukola Ajala, a diabetes specialist at Western Sussex Hospitals in the UK, told Reuters Health. More than 24 million Americans have type 2 diabetes. People with...

The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued the first-ever guidelines for the management of type 2 diabetes in children and teens. Type 2 diabetes is rising rapidly among children and teens because of soaring obesity rates. It now accounts for up to 1 in 3 new cases of diabetes in those younger than 18. These guidelines are for children between the ages of 10 and 18. "Few providers have been trained in managing type 2 diabetes in children and, to date, few medications have been evaluated for safety and [effectiveness] in children," says co-author Janet Silverstein, MD, professor of pediatrics...

The energy in–energy out hypothesis is not set in stone, argues Gary Taubes. It is time to test hormonal theories about why we get fat. “It is better to know nothing,” wrote French physiologist Claude Bernard in An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865), “than to keep in mind fixed ideas based on theories whose confirmation we constantly seek.” Embracing a fixed idea is one of the main dangers in the evolution of any scientific discipline. Ideally, errors will be uncovered in the trial-by-fire of rigorous testing and the science will right itself. In rare cases, however, an...