URINARY MARKER MAY HELP DETECT DIABETES EASILY
In what could lead to improved diagnosis and treatment of
type 2 diabetes, researchers have identified a urinary marker that can lead to
easy detection of diabetes.
“We were able to
identify a urinary marker that can easily detect the presence of a case of
diabetes,” said co-researcher Johan Auwerx from The École polytechnique
fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland.
For the study, the
researchers carried out a study of the genome and the ‘phenome’ (the set of all
phenotypes or clinical features) of a family of mice composed by 183 members.
A particular gene,
located on the mouse’s chromosome 2 plays an important role in the development
of type 2 diabetes, showed the findings.
“The mice with a
high-fat diet are more or less likely to develop diabetes depending on whether
this gene is active or not,” said co-first author Evan Williams from EPFL.
“By combining our
various ‘layers’ of information, we were able to establish exactly the process
that leads from the presence of this gene to an increased risk of diabetes,”
Williams added.
Diabetic mice have
low urinary levels of a specific ‘metabolite’ (2-aminoadipate), the researchers
found.
Its concentration
varies significantly depending on the presence of the identified gene, but not
in relation to the rodents’ body fat.
This proves that it
is indeed the gene, and not the diet, which regulates the expression of this
protein, the researcher said.
“The strength of this
correlation prompted us to ask ourselves whether it would also occur in the
case of humans,” said Evan Williams.
For this step, the
researchers relied on a University Hospital of Lausanne in Switzerland that
involved 1,000 individuals from the region.
In diabetic patients,
the rate of 2-aminoadipase was lower than in the rest, the findings showed.
The study appeared in
the journal Cell Metabolism.
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