Free Republic

A report in the August issue of the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism might help to explain why it's so frustratingly difficult to stick to a diet. When we don't eat, hunger-inducing neurons in the brain start eating bits of themselves. That act of self-cannibalism turns up a hunger signal to prompt eating. "A pathway that is really important for every cell to turn over components in a kind of housekeeping process is also required to regulate appetite," said Rajat Singh of Albert Einstein College of Medicine. The cellular process uncovered in neurons of the brain's hypothalamus is known as...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — In a mouse study, scientists at Mayo Clinic Florida have demonstrated the feasibility of a promising new strategy for treating human type 2 diabetes, which affects more than 200 million people worldwide. In type 2 diabetes, the body stops responding efficiently to insulin, a hormone that controls blood sugar. To compensate for the insensitivity to insulin, many diabetes drugs work by boosting insulin levels; for example, by injecting more insulin or by increasing the amount of insulin secreted from the pancreas. The new study, published in the June 9 issue of PLoS ONE, showed that a different...

WHEN it comes to prescription drugs, newer is not necessarily better. And that’s especially true when treating diabetes. One in 10 Americans has Type 2 diabetes. If the trend continues, one in three will suffer from the disease by the year 2050, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most Type 2 diabetes patients take one or more drugs to control blood sugar. They spent an estimated $12.5 billion on medication in 2007, twice the amount spent in 2001, according to a study by the University of Chicago. (That figure does not including drugs that diabetics are...

Jerusalem, May 23, 2011 – A little bitter with a little sweet, in the form of a nano-complex dietary supplement taken before meals, can result in a substantial reduction of fat and sugar absorption in the body, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Harvard University researchers have found. The researchers previously showed that naringenin, the molecule responsible for the bitter taste in grapefruits, could potentially be used in the treatment of diabetes, arteriosclerosis and hyper-metabolism. However, the absorption of naringenin in its natural form is very low. To overcome this obstacle, the Hebrew University-Harvard research team, led by Dr. Yaakov Nahmias...

Scientists say they have found a way to turn body fat into a better type of fat that burns off calories and weight. The US Johns Hopkins team made the breakthrough in rats but believe the same could be done in humans, offering the hope of a new way to treat obesity. Modifying the expression of a protein linked to appetite not only reduced the animals' calorie intake and weight, but also transformed their fat composition. "Bad" white fat became "good" brown fat, Cell Metabolism journal reports. Brown fat is abundant in babies, which they use as a power source...

Obesity is on the rise in nations across the globe, and more than diet and genetics may be to blame. A new study suggests a third factor is at work: DNA-binding molecules that can be passed down from mother to child in the womb. The finding could explain why what a woman eats while pregnant can sometimes influence the weight of her child—even into adulthood. Scientists first began to suspect that a mother’s diet could affect the weight of her offspring in 1976. Studying the Dutch famine of 1945, when the German army cut off food supplies to western Holland,...

In a new study performed in humans, researchers from Karolinska Institutet have determined the age of atherosclerotic plaques by taking advantage of Carbon-14 (14C) residues in the atmosphere, prevailing after the extensive atomic bomb tests in the 50ties and 60ties. The findings, published in the scientific online journal PLoS ONE, suggest that in most people plaque formation occurs during a relatively short and late time period in life of 3-5 years. > "We suspected that the plaque would be substantially younger than the patients, who were on average were 68 years old at surgery, but we were surprised when we...

Researchers say their mice study should provide a word of caution to people who believe that excess vitamin D prevents cancerOrlando, Fla. -- In mice models of breast cancer, researchers at the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, a part of Georgetown University Medical Center, found that vitamin D significantly reduced development of estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer both in lean and obese mice, but had no beneficial effect in estrogen receptor-negative (ER-) cancer. In fact, obese mice destined to develop ER- breast cancer were clearly worse off than lean ER- mice if they were given vitamin D in their diet....

Fish-rich diet linked to reduction in markers of chronic disease risk in overweight/obese peopleSEATTLE – A study of Yup'ik Eskimos in Alaska, who on average consume 20 times more omega-3 fats from fish than people in the lower 48 states, suggests that a high intake of these fats helps prevent obesity-related chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. The study, led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and conducted in collaboration with the Center for Alaska Native Health Research at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, was published online March 23 in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. "Because...

Diabetes type 2 is caused by insufficient levels of insulin to keep blood glucose under control. Excessive levels of another hormone, glucagon, can also contribute to diabetes type 2 by causing the liver to flood the body with stored glucose. Diabetes type 2 does not arise overnight, but slowly progresses for many years as a condition known as prediabetes. In prediabetes, blood sugar rises to excessive levels after a meal, but is normal or nearly normal after an overnight fast. Researchers are seeking ways to prevent prediabetes from progressing to diabetes. Besides diet and exercise, the diabetic drug metformin can...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Actos, a medicine that treats adult onset diabetes, also prevented the development of the disease in more than 70 percent of people who are considered high risk, according to findings announced Wednesday. The results could help tens of millions of pre-diabetics in the world, including 40 million Americans, who are considered high risk because of excessive weight, ethnicity or other predispositions. An Actos (pioglitazone) pill taken each morning prevented the onset of Type 2 (adult) diabetes in 72 percent of the 602 high-risk participants in the study, whose findings were published in the New England Journal of...

Johns Hopkins researchers believe they have uncovered the molecular switch for the secretion of insulin — the hormone that regulates blood sugar — providing for the first time an explanation of this process. In a report published online March 1 in Cell Metabolism, the researchers say the work solves a longtime mystery and may lead to better treatments for type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease. "Before our discovery, the mechanism behind how exactly the insulin-producing beta cells in the islet of Langerhans of the pancreas fail in type 2 diabetes was incompletely understood, making it difficult...

Weight-loss surgery, once a last resort for extremely overweight people, may soon become an option for those who are less heavy. An advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration will consider on Friday a request by Allergan, the pharmaceutical company, to significantly lower how obese someone must be to qualify for surgery using the company’s Lap-Band device, which restricts intake to the stomach. On Wednesday, the F.D.A. acknowledged that a new study by the company showed that people in the proposed range of obesity who had the band experienced “statistically significant decreases in all measures of weight loss.” If...

A widely-used diabetes drug should be pulled from the market, European regulators say.Avandia is used to control blood sugar levels in type 2 diabetes patients. It was licensed 10 years ago and more than 100,000 patients in the UK use it despite on-going concerns linking it to heart problems. After reviewing safety data, the European Medicines Agency said the benefits no longer outweighed the risks and it should be suspended. The drug - generic name rosiglitazone - is also used in combination with other drugs under the names Avandamet and Avaglim.

The Associated Press WASHINGTON -- Federal health scientists have panned a GlaxoSmithKline study that the company used to defend the safety of its embattled diabetes drug Avandia, a once blockbuster-seller that has fallen out of favor because of potential ties to heart attacks. The Food and Drug Administration posted an exhaustive 700-page review of Avandia on Friday ahead of a meeting next week to decide whether the drug should stay on the market. The FDA finds itself in a difficult position that's all too familiar: reviewing a drug approved a decade ago that now appears tied to deadly side effects....

Orexigen® Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: OREX) today announced data from the CORDiabetes trial for Contrave® (naltrexone sustained release (SR)/bupropion SR) showing that after 56 weeks of treatment, overweight or obese patients with type 2 diabetes lost significantly more weight and achieved greater improvement in glycemic control than those treated with placebo. Over twice as many patients lost at least 5% of their body weight on Contrave versus placebo on an intent-to-treat (ITT) basis (44.5% vs. 18.9% respectively), according to the data presented today by Dr. Priscilla Hollander, M.D., Baylor Medical Center, at an oral session of the 70th Scientific Sessions of...

Replacing White Rice With Brown Rice Reduces Risk of Type 2 Diabetes, Study FindsJune 14, 2010 -- Replacing white rice in your diet with brown rice may reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, according to a new study. The finding is important because the consumption of white rice in the United States has increased dramatically in the past few decades, and about 18 million Americans have type 2 diabetes. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health say eating two or more servings of brown rice weekly seems to be associated with a lower risk of developing type...

LONDON (Reuters) – Patients treated over long periods with metformin, a common drug for diabetes, are at risk of developing vitamin B12 deficiency which is also likely to get worse over time, according to a study published Friday. Dutch scientists who carried out the study said the findings suggest that regular checking of vitamin B-12 levels during long-term metformin treatment should be "strongly considered" to try to prevent deficiency and its effects. Vitamin B12 is essential to maintain healthy nerve cells and red blood cells. It is found in meat, dairy products, eggs, fish, shellfish and fortified breakfast cereals, and...

Patients with diabetic nephropathy, kidney disease caused by diabetes and treated with high doses of vitamin B, suffered rapid deterioration of the kidneys, a recent study has found. Diabetics in addition to kidney function loss also were affected by higher rates of heart attack and stroke than those who took a placebo, according to the clinical research in the April 28 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Diabetic nephropathy affects the network of tiny blood vessels in the glomerulus, a structure in the kidney made of capillary blood vessels, which is needed to filter blood. Despite...

One of the scourges of modern life may have been profoundly misunderstood BEING fat is bad for you. On that, almost everyone agrees. It is just possible, though, that almost everyone is wrong. In fact, getting fat may be a mechanism that protects the body. The health problems associated with fatness may not be caused by it but be another consequence, another symptom, of overeating. That is the heretical proposal of Roger Unger and Philipp Scherer. Dr Unger and Dr Scherer, who work at the University of Texas, in Dallas, have been reviewing the science of what has come to...