The fact that diabetes and heart disease may probably exist concurrently among many individuals isn’t unknown to scientists. And, the treatment of diabetes doesn’t allegedly compulsorily comprise of cholesterol control too. Now researchers from the VCU School of Medicine have discovered significant molecular factors that could be associated with the vulnerability to diabetes.
According to the investigators, the expulsion of cholesterol by an important enzyme named CEH may probably be able to soothe inflammation. Afterward, it could influence diabetes development, leading the path for novel target therapies. The scientists believe that this could one day avert diabetes and aid in foretelling whether a patient could be susceptible to the disease or not.
The findings were led by Shobha Ghosh, Ph.D., professor of internal medicine, pulmonary division in the VCU School of Medicine. Together with her team, an analysis of a transgenic mouse model was conducted. It was used to investigate the part played by the key enzyme CEH. The latter is apparently responsible for the eviction of cholesterol from cells, later making it available to HDL. Augmenting this method has the ability for CEH to seemingly help the body get rid of cholesterol.
It was particularly observed that CEH transgenic mice possibly show lowered inflammation of the fat tissue. Whether or not the reduction in inflammation courtesy of the expression of human CEH gene led to a lowering of inflammation-related diseases like diabetes was then examined. The investigators found that upon expression of the CEH transgene, the mice showed enhanced insulin sensitivity.
Ghosh suggests that the results may indicate thus that there may be a decrease in formation of Western diet-induced diabetes in such cases. What’s more, the mice appeared to gain weight equally and yet this improvement was seen.
“Although diabetes and heart disease often co-exist, current management of diabetes does not necessarily include cholesterol and/or inflammation control,” explained Ghosh. “These studies provide the first evidence that targeting fat tissue inflammation as well as elimination of cholesterol from the body may be emerging new strategies to prevent diabetes,” she added.
An earlier work had seen Ghosh’s team revealing that the gene for this enzyme when inducted in mice had the ability to allegedly lower Western diet-induced heart disease in the transgenic model significantly.
The April 2010 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry featured that finding.