Low levels of mitochondrial enzyme may signal type 2 diabetes
Type 2 diabetes is a prevalent disease all over the world, and those who have the metabolic disorder may buy Actos to better control their blood glucose levels.
Type 2 diabetes is a prevalent disease all over the world, and those who have the metabolic disorder may buy Actos to better control their blood glucose levels. According to researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, Massachusetts, diabetics tend to have lower levels of a mitochondrial enzyme, a finding that could pave the way to the development of new drugs for the condition.
Senior author C. Ronald Kahn and his colleagues, who published their results in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, explained that levels of the Sirt3 enzyme are decreased by at least one-half in humans and animals with type 2 diabetes. The team believes that this may contribute to the development of insulin resistance, one of the earliest indicators of the illness.
Low Sirt3 may mean compromised mitochondrial activity, which in turn reveals deficiencies in energy metabolism.
"Ours is perhaps the first study to understand what is going wrong in the mitochondria of those with diabetes," Kahn said. "Many studies have shown that the mitochondria don't work well in those with diabetes. This points to a cause of why they don't work well."
He added that in further studies, the researchers are planning to find out exactly what proteins Sirt3 is involved with in the development of insulin resistance.
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