Researchers Discovered New Mechanism For Treating Diabetes

Researchers have discovered a mechanism for normalizing blood sugar that doesn't involve insulin and could offer a new therapeutic approach to both kinds of diabetes.

Reporting in Nature Medicine online on February 13, Umut Ozcan, MD, and colleagues in Children's Division of Endocrinology show that a regulatory protein called XBP-1s, when activated artificially in the liver, can normalize high blood sugar in both lean, insulin-deficient type 1 diabetic mice and obese, insulin-resistant type 2 diabetic mice. This suggests that approaches aimed at increasing XBP-1s activity may benefit patients with either type of diabetes.

Diabetes can result from either a deficiency of insulin (type 1 diabetes) or decreased sensitivity to insulin (type 2 diabetes).  Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston have discovered a mechanism for no