Diabetes mellitus is a severe and debilitating chronic disease that develops in nearly 5 percent of the world’s population. People with this disease have a shortage of insulin or a reduced ability to use insulin, the hormone regulating blood glucose levels, which is normally produced by the pancreas. In the United States alone, an estimated 18 million people have diabetes, and each year about 1 million Americans are diagnosed with the disease. It is the sixth leading cause of death in the US and is responsible for over 200,000 deaths a year. Insulin-dependent (type I) diabetes accounts for around 10% of diabetics. For those patients, suffering from an inability of their pancreas to produce insulin, the only practical treatment possible is regular insulin replacement by multiple daily injections. Transplantation of a pancreas or pancreatic tissue would be beneficial to millions of such patients in that it would restore their normal ability to produce self insulin. Transplantation of human pancreas or pancreatic islets is a practiced and time-honored such therapeutic approach, but is extremely limited by the severe shortage of human donor organs. Tissera's R&D efforts in this domain are directed towards the development of a universally available and reliable source of animal fetal donor pancreatic precursor tissue, suitable for transplantation and eventual normal structural and functional growth in human diabetics.
Glutaminase 2 (GLS2) is a master regulator of glutaminolysis. GLS2 converts glutamine to glutamate, thereby playing a role in cellular energy production. GLS2 is abundant in the liver, and is also found in pancreatic β-cells. However, the role of GLS2 in pancreatic islets – in which both ɑ- and β- cells are present – associated with glucose metabolism is currently unknown.
One of the most important and difficult aspects of a forensic examination is identifying the cause of death.
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Type 2 diabetes patients who are not overweight and who have had the disorder for less than a decade can benefit from stromal stem cells transplanted from their own bone marrow, according to a study published today in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine.
Type I Diabetes Mellitus, also called T1D, is an autoimmune disorder that results in an irreversible loss of insulin-producing beta-cells found in the pancreas.
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The brain plays a major role in controlling our blood glucose levels. In type 2 diabetics this glucose metabolism brain control is often dysfunctional. Genetic components for this phenomenon have so far remained elusive.
Researchers of Peter the Great St.Petersburg Polytechnic University in collaboration with colleagues from Tsinghua University (China) developed a new dynamic light scattering method to determine the sizes of circulating immune complexes in blood serum.
Type 1 diabetes mellitus and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) are the two main types of diabetes, while T2DM accounts for 90%-95% of those with diabetes.
One could say that mitochondria, the energy-producing organelles inside every human cell, dance to their own beat.
The loss of insulin-secreting beta cells leads to type 1 diabetes. Islet cell transplantation has the potential to cure diabetes, but donors are rare.
Just where fat is deposited in the body and to what degree a person may benefit from a lifestyle intervention depends, among other things, on how sensitive the brain is to insulin.
Researchers have discovered that a group of nerve cells promotes the consumption of high-fat food.