Doctors Link Protein To Increased Risk Of Diabetes
Posted on: Wednesday, 9 July 2008, 13:21 CDT
Doctors may be able to gauge a person’s risk of developing the most common form of diabetes by the levels of a certain protein made in the liver.
Researchers found that people who had high levels of a protein called feutin-A were more likely to develop type 2 diabetes over six years than those with low levels of the protein.
Feutin-A may be involved in the metabolism of the sugar glucose as well as calcium, researchers said. Type 2 diabetes is marked by high levels of glucose, the body's source of energy, in the blood. It is the most common form of diabetes worldwide.
"It might ultimately be useful to use this (fetuin-A) for screening and identifying people at higher risk for diabetes," said Dr. Joachim Ix of the University of California at San Diego and the San Diego Veterans Affairs Healthcare System, who led the study.
People with type 2 diabetes are resistant to the effects of insulin, a hormone released by the pancreas that regulates the absorption of sugar by the cells.
“It might be that using medications that control glucose earlier might actually prevent diabetes in those people," Ix said.
"It might be that if you identify people at higher risk, they may be more motivated to do things like diet and exercise that are known to be important in preventing development of diabetes."
The study consisted of 519 participants in their 70s. Those in the highest third for blood levels of the protein were about 2-1/2 times as likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those in the lowest third, according to the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Researchers noted that the protein attributed to diabetes risk even when other factors such as weight, exercise, sex or race were left out.
Fetuin-A, which makes the body less sensitive to insulin, also could be the target of future drugs aimed at preventing or treating diabetes, Ix said.
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On the Net:
University of California at San Diego
San Diego Veterans Affairs Healthcare System
Journal of the American Medical Association
Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports
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