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Diabetes a disease of the nervous system
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Canadian researchers have found that the body’s nervous system helps to trigger diabetes. This breakthrough could lead the way to new treatments for the disease. The findings, published in the journal Cell, provide evidence that diabetes may be a disease of the nervous system and not just an autoimmune disease.
Type 1 diabetes, which affects millions of people worldwide, occurs when certain parts of the pancreas, known as islet cells, are destroyed and no longer produce insulin. Insulin is needed to capture energy from the food we eat. People with Type 1 diabetes have to take daily insulin injections to survive. The disease is associated with serious complications, including stroke, blindness, heart attack, and kidney failure.
Researchers have spent years trying to understand why the immune system attacks and destroys the islet cells.
More recently, focus has been on the link between diabetes and the nervous system. In this recent discovery, researchers found that abnormal nerve endings in the islet cells triggered a chain of events that caused Type 1 diabetes in mice. When they removed the sensory nerve cells, the mice did not develop the disorder despite the fact that the autoimmunity in the mice continued.
Further research shows strong evidence that treating the abnormal sensory nerve cells dramatically improves insulin resistance in mice with Type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is a metabolic disorder in which the body has trouble using its own insulin to control blood sugar. It is often associated with obesity.
The next step is to extend the research to people with diabetes to see whether they have the same sensory nerve abnormalities found in the diabetic mice.
These early findings have already changed the approach to diabetes research, and may ultimately lead to new and better treatments for this serious and widespread disease.
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