Biomarker for Diabetes Risk Identified, Linked With Obesity
Researchers at the University of California San Francisco have discovered a biological pathway in fat cells linked with high diabetes risk. The findings shed new light on the links between obesity and type 2 diabetes and could lead to treatment options to prevent diabetes or more easily predict its onset.
The molecule is associated with "good fat" in humans and is present in most obese adults at levels correlating to the person's obesity level. With about a third of adults in the United States being clinically obese, extreme obesity has doubled in the past twenty years. Recent research, however, has shown that obesity itself is not a stand-alone marker for diabetes.
“It turns out that only about 30 percent of people with obesity are really high risk. The problem is that fundamentally we don’t know why some people with obesity go on to develop diabetes and others don’t,” said Suneil Koliwad, MD, PhD, assistant professor in the UCSF Diabetes Center and one of the new study’s two senior authors.
The molecule is also associated with fat's switch from "white" to "beige" as it becomes "healthy fat" for heat retention.
The study's primary author, Shingo Kajimura, is known for his work in discovering that fat cells can "mutate" from so-called "white fat" to "beige fat" to be quickly burned for heat retention in cold. This study lead to a set of follow-on studies in which temperature control in a person's environment may be a useful tool towards improving the health of those who are obese or at risk of becoming so.
What Kajimura and Koliwad discovered in that process was that a molecule called GTF2IRD1 activates when beige fat is creating more heat. GTF2IRD1 contributes to collagen production, which causes fibrosis in fat tissue. This, in turn, improves glucose metabolism, which reduces diabetes risks.
“These were surprising and exciting results,” Kajimura said. “We used to think that adipose tissue fibrosis was just a consequence of “unhealthy fat,” but this study suggests that fibrosis is an important therapeutic target to prevent obesity and metabolic disease in humans.”
Source: UCSF.edu
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