Scientists Discover Link Between Obesity, Diabetes
In a major breakthrough, scientists have
zeroed in on key disease events triggering type 2 diabetes in obese people.
Scientists at the CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology
(CSIR-IICB), in collaboration with clinicians from ILS Hospitals, Kolkata, and Institute of
Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (IPGMER), Kolkata,
analysed fat tissues (visceral adipose tissue or VAT) of obese people
undergoing bariatric surgery.
“A lot
of obese people are getting diabetes type 2 (insulin resistance diabetes). Even
in rural India, obesity is increasing. We have discovered a novel mechanism in
the pathway that leads to type 2 diabetes in obese people. This is perhaps the
root cause of the pathway and opens up possibilities for development of new
drugs based on the finding,” immunologist Dr Dipyaman Ganguly of CSIR-IICB
told IANS.
Published in August in the journal Diabetes,
the study builds upon existing data on the links between obesity and diabetes.
“When a
person becomes obese, the fat cells in the adipose tissue accumulate fat.
Previous research has established that immune cells called macrophages
infiltrate fat tissue and produce chemical mediators called cytokines which
leads to inflammation responsible for the eventual insulin resistance,”
explained Dr Ganguly.
But the question remained why the macrophages
— which usually respond to infections — become activated in fat tissue.
“We
found this link. When a person becomes obese, the fat cells get enlarged and
they release a specific chemical called chemerin and this chemerin recruits
specific immune cells called plasmacytoid dendritic cells (or pDCs) and these
in turn drive macrophages to an activated stage and lead to inflammation,”
said Dr Ganguly.
Apart from a potential drug target, chemerin could also be used as a biomarker to pinpoint obese
individuals who are more prone to diabetes, said Dr Ganguly,
clarifying not all obese individuals suffer from the non-communicable disease.
Although the study was performed on a
specific Indian cohort, Dr Ganguly believes researchers globally will take the
findings forward and carry out analysis on different communities to gauge the
link between obesity and insulin-resistance in those groups.
The key co-authors of the paper are Dr Amrit
Raj Ghosh, Dr Om Tantia (who led the team of surgeons who recruited the
patients and collected samples) and endocrinologist Dr Satinath Mukhopadhyay
from IPGMER.
According to the latest Lancet study, China,
India and the US are among the top three countries with a high diabetic
population.
“In
about 70 per cent of cases in bariatric surgery, diabetes goes into remission.
So with a biomarker, we can also check if there has been a drop in the levels
of chemerin after surgery. Also, India has one of the highest rates of
progression from metabolic syndrome to diabetes. We have to identify who are at
risk, we can’t go on screening the entire population,” Dr Mukhopadhyay
said.
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