Scientists of the Southwestern Medical Center of the University of Texas (UT) believe that by eliminating the effect of a particular hormone type 1 diabetes can be translated into a form of asymptomatic insulin-independent disorder, according to an online edition for girls And women from 14 to 35 years old Pannochka. Net The results obtained by them in experiments on mice indicate that insulin becomes completely superfluous and its absence does not lead to diabetes or any other anomaly if the action of glucagon. The hormone glucagon produced by the pancreas prevents low blood sugar in healthy people and increases its level in type 1 diabetes.

"We are all used to thinking that insulin is an all-powerful hormone, without which life is impossible, but it is not so," says Dr. Roger Unger, professor of the Department of Internal Medicine and senior author of an article published in Diabetes magazine. "If diabetes is defined as restoration to the norm of glucose homeostasis, then our method can probably be regarded as very close to the means of" healing "".

The introduction of insulin is the gold standard for the treatment of type 1 diabetes (insulin-dependent diabetes) since its discovery in 1922. But the regulation of diabetes alone with insulin, even optimal, can not restore normal glucose tolerance. New data indicate that the restoration of glucose tolerance to normal is achieved by eliminating the effect of glucagon.

Usually glucagon is released at a low level in the blood of glucose, or sugar. With insulin deficiency, however, glucagon levels are excessively high, which causes the liver to release additional amounts of glucose into the blood. This action is opposite to the action of insulin, which stimulates the removal of sugar from the blood cells of the body.

With type 1 diabetes, which affects about 1 million people only in the US, insulin-producing pancreatic islet cells die. As a countermeasure, patients should receive insulin several times a day to digest the sugar in the blood, regulate its level and prevent diabetic coma. They should also adhere to a strictly limited diet.

Scientists have studied how genetically modified mice with a lack of glucagon receptors respond to an oral test for glucose tolerance. A test that can be used to diagnose diabetes, gestational diabetes (pregnant diabetes) and prediabetes, assesses the body's ability to metabolize, or break down, blood glucose.

The researchers found that mice with normal insulin production, but without functioning glucagon receptors respond to the test normally. The same picture was observed if their insulin-producing beta-cells were destroyed. Mice did not experience the action of either insulin or glucagon, but they did not develop diabetes.

"These data suggest that if there is no glucagon, it does not matter whether there is insulin," explains Dr. Unger. "This does not mean that insulin is not important. It is necessary for normal growth and development from birth to adulthood. But in adulthood, at least in terms of glucose metabolism, the role of insulin is to control glucagon ".

"And if you do not have glucagon, you do not need insulin".

The next step in the work of researchers will be to determine the mechanism leading to this result.

"We hope that this discovery will someday help people with type 1 diabetes," says lead author Dr. Young Lee, associate professor of the Department of Internal Medicine of the Southwestern Medical Center UT. "If we can find a way to block the action of glucagon in humans, we can minimize the need for insulin therapy".

All that reduces the need for insulin is good, says Dr. Unger.

"Achieving by insulin levels of insulin levels high enough to reach glucagon cells is only possible with quantities that are redundant for other tissues," he says.. "Peripherally introduced insulin can not exactly duplicate the normal process by which the body produces and distributes this hormone".

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