foodconsumer.org: Inflammation may raise diabetes risk

Inflammation may raise diabetes risk
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admin on 04/24/2009 22:59:00
 
An international research team has discovered that an inflammatory factor seems
to cause insulin resistance in the obese.
Medical scientists have long pondered the following: does obesity cause
diabetes, or does diabetes cause obesity?
Obesity will soon surpass tobacco as the leading cause of preventable deaths in
the United States, according to Dr. David Satcher.  The former surgeon general
asserted in the New York Times that as a nation, we should be concerned with the
pathology associated with carrying excess weight.  This is because a startling
number of Americans have weight issues:  35% of them are overweight, and another
37% are obese, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The results of this new study, published in the April issue of Cell Metabolism,
delineate how inflammation and obesity work synergistically to increase diabetes
risk.
Researchers found that fat tissue not only serves as a “storage facility”
for excess fat, it forms triglycerides and energy releases, in the form of fatty
acid, into the blood stream. One particular chemokine, called CXL5, is increased
dramatically in the bloodstreams of those who are obese, as compared to those
who are lean.
And, CXL5 is the key to insulin resistance in laboratory mice. When scientists
treated affected mice with antibodies that neutralize the chemokine, or with
drugs that blocked the receptor it triggers, insulin resistance was reversed.
Researchers also discovered that CXL5 circulates outside of muscle in the cells
that line blood vessel walls, the lung and the intestine. Thus, there seems to
be a correlation with other inflammatory illnesses, such as atherosclerosis, and
CXL5.
Something that has puzzled researchers in the past is that although a large
percentage of obese individuals are insulin resistant, others are not.
Inflammation appears to be the reason for the inconsistency.  Rather than
obesity being the primary dynamic for type 2 diabetes, the results of this study
seem to point to CXL5 as the “X” factor that determines whether or not an
individual will develop diabetes in the long run.
(By Rachel Stockton, and edited by Heather Kelley)