Type 2 Diabetes: Is It An Autoimmune Disease?

Type 2 Diabetes: Is It an Autoimmune Disease?

For decades, doctors and researchers have believed type 2 diabetes is a metabolic disorder. This type of disorder occurs when your body’s natural chemical processes don’t work properly.
New research suggests type 2 diabetes may actually be an autoimmune disease. If that’s the case, new treatments and preventive measures may be developed to treat this condition.
Currently, there isn’t enough evidence to fully support this idea. For now, doctors will continue to prevent and treat type 2 diabetes with diet, lifestyle changes, medications, and injected insulin.
Read on to learn more about the research that’s being done and the implications it may have on the treatment and prevention of type 2 diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes has historically been viewed as a different type of disease from type 1 diabetes, despite their similar name. Type 2 diabetes occurs when your body becomes resistant to insulin or can’t produce enough insulin. Insulin is a hormone that moves glucose from your blood to your cells. Your cells convert glucose to energy.
Without insulin, your cells can’t use glucose, and symptoms of diabetes can occur. These symptoms may include fatigue, increased hunger, increased thirst, and blurred vision.
Type 1 diabetes, sometimes called juvenile diabetes because it’s often diagnosed in children and teens, is an autoimmune disease.
In people with type 1 diabetes, the immune system mistakenly attacks the healthy tissues of the body and destroys the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas. The damage from these attacks prevents the pancreas from supplying insulin to Continue reading

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Why does obesity cause diabetes? You asked Google – here’s the answer

‘Cause” is a strong word. It means that A results in B happening. Causality is also surprisingly difficult to prove. Most medical studies only show association between A and B, while causality often remains speculative and frustratingly elusive. Obesity and diabetes are no exception.
There are many types of diabetes. All are unified by elevated levels of blood sugar. Type 1 diabetes accounts for less than 10% of cases and results from autoimmune destruction of the beta cells in the pancreas, which produce and release insulin. (In an autoimmune process, antibodies that normally target and fight infection instead target one’s own cells). Type 3c (secondary) diabetes can occur when there has been destruction of the pancreatic beta cells through some other process, such as excessive alcohol, inflammation or surgical resection.
There are also many genetic forms of diabetes, each usually resulting from a single gene mutation that affects pancreatic function in some way. Finally, there is type 2 diabetes (T2D), which accounts for more than 90% of cases globally. Media reports of diabetes, particularly in the context of obesity, usually relate to T2D, the two terms often being used interchangeably.
Only T2D appears to be associated with obesity. Epidemiological studies across the world have shown that the greater one’s body mass index (BMI), the greater the chance of developing T2D. However, this is not the same as saying that obesity causes T2D. The majority of people who are obese will never develop T2D – a fact that exposes the statement “obesity causes diabetes” a Continue reading

Obesity, Diabetes, and Epigenetic Inheritance

Disease risk can be transmitted epigenetically via egg and sperm cells, a mouse study shows.
While scientists have identified several genetic risk factors for diabetes and obesity, some have proposed epigenetic alterations in gametes as another potential mechanism of disease risk inheritance. Now, a mouse study by researchers in Germany provides new evidence in support of this epigenetic inheritance theory, showing that different diets in otherwise identical mice can determine glucose intolerance and obesity risk in offspring via egg and sperm cells. The team’s findings were published today (March 14) in Nature Genetics.
“The view so far was that [risk] is all determined by genes—it’s fate,” said study coauthor Johannes Beckers of the Helmholtz Zentrum München. “But our findings give back a certain responsibility to the parents. They really have the possibility to affect what offspring inherit in their epigenome.”
Approximately 90 percent of nearly 350 million cases of diabetes worldwide are classified as type 2. In addition to environmental factors often cited to explain the high prevalence of the disease—including poor diets and sedentary lifestyles—several epidemiological and mouse studies have hinted that diet-induced susceptibility to obesity and diabetes, acquired during parents’ lifetimes, can be inherited.
However, previous analyses of the phenomenon have relied on in vivo fertilization to produce offspring, explained Beckers, making it difficult to distinguish heritable, epigenetic determinants in the gametes from other factors that can influen Continue reading

Researchers identify key mechanism by which obesity causes type 2 diabetes

UT Southwestern researchers have identified a major mechanism by which obesity causes type 2 diabetes, which is a common complication of being overweight that afflicts more than 30 million Americans and over 400 million people worldwide.
Researchers found that in obesity, insulin released into the blood by the pancreas is unable to pass through the cells that form the inner lining of blood vessels. As a result, insulin is not delivered to the muscles, where it usually stimulates most of the body's glucose to be metabolized. Blood glucose levels rise, leading to diabetes and its related cardiovascular, kidney and vision problems, said Dr. Philip Shaul, Director of the Center for Pulmonary and Vascular Biology in the Department of Pediatrics at UT Southwestern.
"It was totally unpredicted that a major problem in obesity is the delivery of circulating insulin to your muscle. It was even more surprising that this problem involves immunoglobulins, which are the proteins that make up circulating antibodies," said Dr. Chieko Mineo, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, who is a co-senior author on the report with Dr. Shaul.
The researchers found that obese mice have an unexpected chemical change in their immunoglobulins. "The abnormal immunoglobulins then act on cells lining blood vessels to inhibit an enzyme needed to transfer insulin from the bloodstream into the muscle," said Dr. Shaul, who holds the Associates First Capital Corporation Distinguished Chair in Pediatrics. "Type 2 diabetes patients have the same chemical change, and if we give a mouse immunoglobulins from a type 2 d Continue reading

FREE Diabetes Testing and Healthy Heart Screenings

Please see the schedule below for upcoming Healthcare Clinics including:
Diabetes Testing
and
Healthy Heart Screenings
• Our Diabetes Testing measures your A1C levels. Your A1C is a measure of your average blood sugar over the previous 3 months. This test requires only a small amount of blood and no fasting.
• Our Healthy Heart screenings offer a risk assessment for heart disease, a lipid-stick profile test and a blood pressure check.
All screenings are available at the pharmacy for FREE.
For people with diabetes, pre-diabetes, heart disease and their families
For people with diabetes, pre-diabetes, heart disease and their families Continue reading