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This week on Health Watch, we’re talking about diabetes. Previously, we discussed a surprising discovery at UT Southwestern Medical Center: rodents dying from diabetes were restored to full health with a single injection of the gene for the hormone leptin.
Leptin appears to suppress glucagon, a hormone that normally raises glucose levels when blood sugar is low. With insulin deficiency, glucagon levels are too high, which causes the liver to release excess glucose into the bloodstream. The high amounts of leptin produced by animals given the gene countered the effects of high glucose from diabetes. Dr. Roger Unger, a UT Southwestern diabetes researcher, says it’s too soon to know whether leptin could replace insulin as a diabetes treatment in humans. It is possible that leptin could be used in conjunction with insulin or other treatments to manage diabetes. The next step is to study other ways to suppress glucagon and to start clinical trials of leptin.
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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