International journal of diabetology & vascular disease research最新文献

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) has become a major health problem throughout the world and the epidemic is particularly severe in Asian countries. Compared with European populations, Asians tend to develop diabetes at a younger age and at much higher incidence rates given the same amount of weight gain. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified over 70 loci associated with T2D. Although the majority of GWAS results were conducted in populations of European ancestry, recent GWAS in Asians have made important contributions to the identification of T2D susceptibility loci. These studies not only confirmed T2D susceptibility loci initially identified in European populations, but also identified novel susceptibility loci that provide new insights into the pathophysiology of diseases. In this article, we review GWAS results of T2D conducted in East and South Asians and compare them to those of European populations. Currently identified T2D genetic variants do not appear to explain the phenomenon that Asians are more susceptible to T2D than European populations, suggesting further studies in Asian populations are needed.

Nearly 35% of adults and 20% of children in the United States are obese, defined as having a body mass index (BMI) ≥ 30 kg/m². Obesity is an established risk factor for many cancers, and obesity-associated metabolic perturbations often manifest in Type 2 diabetes mellitus and/or the metabolic syndrome. As part of the growth-promoting, proinflammatory microenvironment of the obese and/or diabetic state, crosstalk between macrophages, adipocytes, and epithelial cells occurs via metabolically-regulated hormones, cytokines, and other mediators to enhance cancer risk and/or progression. This review synthesizes the evidence on key biological mechanisms underlying the associations between obesity, diabetes and cancer, with particular emphasis on enhancements in growth factor signaling, inflammation, and vascular integrity processes. These interrelated pathways represent mechanistic targets for disrupting the obesity-diabetes-cancer link, and several diabetes drugs, such as metformin and rosiglitazone, are being intensely studied for repurposing as cancer chemopreventive agents.

Background: Blood glucose levels regulate the rate of insulin secretion, which is the body's mechanism for preventing excessive elevation in blood glucose. Impaired glucose metabolism and insulin resistance have been linked to excess body fat composition. Here, we quantify abdominal muscle and abdominal adipose tissue compartments in a large nonhuman primate, the baboon, and investigate their relationship with serum glucose response to a hyperglycemic challenge.

Methods: Five female baboons were fasted for 16 hours prior to 90 minute body imaging experiment that consisted of a 20-min baseline, followed by a bolus infusion of glucose (500mg/kg). The blood glucose was sampled at regular intervals. The total volumes of the muscle, visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissue were measured.

Results and discussion: We found that adipose tissue composition predicted fluctuations in glucose responses to a hyperglycemic challenge of a non-human primate. Animals with higher visceral adiposity showed significantly reduced glucose elimination. The glucose responses were positively correlated with body weight, visceral and muscle fat (p < 0.005). Polynomial regression analysis showed that body weight, visceral and muscle were significant.

Conclusions: These results reveal the similarity between humans and baboons with respect to glucose metabolism and strengthen the utility of baboon for biomedical research.