Research Hints at New Treatment for Diabetes

While medical science cannot claim to understand ALL aspects of Diabetes, we do have a firm grasp on the basic disease process. This understanding occasionally allows us to try and combat the chronic disease at the fundamental level. These kinds of interventions hold the most promise in leading to effective management, or even a cure.

Let’s try and gain a basic understanding of the disease process. We all know that it has something to do with the control of our body’s blood sugar levels. The basic problem in type 2 diabetes, which is the most common form of the disease, is that the body loses the ability to respond to the main sugar balancing hormone in our body, Insulin. Experts have given this phenomenon a name — “Insulin Resistance”.

In the 1990s, a then, new class of drugs with great promise called “thiazolidinediones” was explored. Pioglitazone (brand names Actos or Pioz, depending on where you live) is a famous member of this class. The promise of these drugs is that they seem to REVERSE the Insulin resistance process that affects all diabetics. In effect, the drugs were found to restore the body’s natural ability to respond to insulin. That’s an incredible upside. The side effects of these drugs are a serious issue though. Weight gain, bone density loss, and heart problems are the highlights of the parade of adverse drug reactions that are associated with thiazolidinediones. The search for a less problematic treatment has continued.

Recently, while working with mice, scientists have discovered that a certain protein called “Fibroblast Growth Factor - 1” (FGF-1) seems to have all the insulin restoring benefits of the thiazolidinediones, but FAR fewer side effects. Mice that had been bred to suffer from diabetes when eating a high fat diet were treated with a synthetic version of FGF-1. The results have been promising. The protein seems to restore the effectiveness of the mice’s OWN INSULIN to a great extent.

This doesn’t mean that synthetic FGF-1 will cure diabetes. It doesn’t even mean that FGF-1 will be free of side effects. It only shows that the protein has shown a lot of promise and has moved us toward combating the modern day plague of diabetes more effectively.