Hormone from adipose tissue could provide treatment
for type 2 diabetes
Replenishing adiponectin, a hormone released from
adipose tissue, might provide a novel treatment strategy for insulin resistance
and type 2 diabetes, according to Japanese researchers.
Dr Takashi Kadowaki, University of Tokyo and colleagues
administered the hormone, adiponectin, to obese mice fed a high-fat diet
and to mice that had reduced levels of body fat (lipotrophy).
The researchers say that obesity induced by a high-fat
diet leads to reduced expression of adiponectin and that this correlates
with insulin resistance in mice with altered insulin sensitivity. Adiponectin
works by reducing triglyceride levels in skeletal muscle, they say.
They speculate that replenishment of adiponectin
in patients with type 2 diabetes associated with decreased adiponectin
has several therapeutic advances over current antidiabetic drugs. For
example, it exerts antidiabetic effects without increasing body weight,
they say.
The authors conclude that replenishment of adiponectin
can reverse insulin resistance not only in lipoatrophic mice but also
in murine models of obesity and type 2 diabetes (Nature Medicine
2001;7:941).
A separate team of researchers, Dr Anders Berg,
of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, and colleagues have
also found that injecting adiponectin into obese diabetic mice lowers
blood glucose levels. They say that the effect on glucose is not associated
with an increase in insulin levels, indicating that the glycaemic effect
is not secondary to increased insulin secretion (ibid p947).
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