Health Watch — Diabetes: A Surprising Discovery
Health Watch is a Public Service of the Office of News and Publications and is intended to provide general information only and should not replace the advice of a medical professional. You should contact your physician if you have questions about any of these topics.
This week on Health Watch, we’re talking about diabetes. In type 1 diabetes, which affects about a million Americans, the body doesn’t produce insulin. It can’t be cured, but it is managed with insulin injections. But now doctors at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found that there’s something else that might help manage diabetes.
A single injection of the gene for the hormone leptin restored rodents in diabetic coma to full health. Dr. Roger Unger, a UT Southwestern diabetes researcher, said this was a big surprise. Doctors have long believed that insulin was the only substance that could correct the insulin deficiency of diabetes. In the study, mice and rats on the verge of death from diabetic coma were given a single injection of the leptin gene, and that reversed all the consequences of diabetes within two weeks, without any additional treatment.
Next on Health Watch, we’ll look at how this works and what it means.
Visit http://www.utsouthwestern.org/endocrinology to learn more about UT Southwestern’s clinical services in endocrinology.
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September 2008
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