Harvard Doctors Reverse Long-Held Ideas About Fat, Diabetes, and Heart Disease
An Anonymous Coward writes:
Insulin resistance, a significant risk factor for diabetes, develops when the body's cells do not react to insulin and are unable to use the glucose (sugar) in the bloodstream. The condition has been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and atherosclerosis, which is an accumulation of fats within blood arteries that can restrict blood flow to the body's tissues. However, the precise mechanism through which insulin and the cells lining vascular walls interact is unclear.
Joslin Diabetes Center scientists describe a series of studies designed to investigate the link between insulin, fats, and the vascular system in a paper published in Circulation Research. The group, led by Dr. George King, chief scientific officer and director of research at Joslin, discovered a brand-new method by which the body's metabolism is controlled by endothelial cells, which line blood vessels. The results challenge scientific dogma by suggesting that, contrary to what was previously believed, vascular dysfunction may really be the root cause of the undesirable metabolic changes that can result in diabetes.
In people with diabetes and insulin resistance, the idea has always been that white fat and inflammation causes dysfunction in the blood vessels, leading to the prevalence of heart disease, eye disease, and kidney disease in this patient population," said King, the Thomas J. Beatson, Jr. Professor of Medicine in the Field of Diabetes at Harvard Medical School. But we found that blood vessels can have a major controlling effect here, and that was not known before."
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