Discover 8 Proteins to Help You Avoid Diabetes
Hibernating bears are obese, overeat, and do not exercise during hibernation months, but do not develop diabetes. Eight proteins were found that contained the secret. There is also a human equivalent protein, so it may be useful in the treatment and prevention of human diabetes. This is the content reported by the health medicine web magazine ‘Health Day’ on the 22nd (local time) based on a paper by researchers at the Bear Center at Washington State University published in iScience.
Type 2 diabetes, the most common type of diabetes, occurs when the body cannot use the hormone insulin properly. Insulin helps move sugar (blood sugar) in the blood obtained from food intake into the body’s cells so it can be used as energy. In type 2 diabetes, your body’s cells do not respond properly to insulin, causing sugar to build up in your blood.
A precursor to type 2 diabetes is called insulin resistance. Because the body’s cells do not respond to insulin, they cannot easily absorb blood sugar. The insulin response system is simply broken. In humans, the main risk factors for insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes are obesity and lack of exercise.
On the other hand, bears overeat, gain weight, and spend most of their time sedentary to hibernate. “If we had found it in humans, we would have thought it would be a very worrisome condition medically,” said Blair Perry, a professor of biology at Washington State University, one of the researchers.
Bears develop insulin resistance during hibernation. However, their blood sugar and insulin levels remain stable and they do not progress to diabetes. When spring arrives and the bears are out and about to roam, insulin sensitivity returns to normal.
To find out, the researchers analyzed serum and fat cell samples collected from grizzly bears (grizzlies) raised at the Bear Centre. Some samples were taken during the active phase and others during the hibernation phase. The researchers interrupted their normal hibernation by feeding the bears honey water for two weeks during their hibernation period. Hibernating bears do not eat, but they do move a little while being slightly awake.
In the laboratory, the researchers observed how gene activity changes in the cells when the serum and adipocyte samples were mixed by mixing the adipocytes in the hibernation phase with the serum in the active phase. When the researchers injected serum from a hibernating bear into adipocytes collected from a bear that was in normal hibernation, the cells showed changes in gene activity similar to those of cells in the active phase. This allowed the researchers to identify eight proteins that play a key role in converting insulin resistance and insulin sensitivity.
The next step is to find out exactly how the protein works in the bear’s body, Perry said. He hopes that this work will eventually lead to the development of new drugs to treat or prevent diabetes.
He notes that studying bears that are healthy despite their huge fat reserves could also benefit human health. Bears do not lose muscle or bone even after several months of living as a ‘couch potato’ (a person who eats and sleeps in front of the TV all day). If you find the secret, it can help the health of modern people who spend more time sitting.
Emily Gallagher, an endocrinologist at Icahn University Mount Sinai Hospital in the US, who reviewed the paper, said, “Bears and humans are very different, but research like this can help discover genes and proteins associated with insulin resistance .” “We need to better understand how proteins work on metabolism.” Blocking or improving certain proteins or their actions can help reverse insulin resistance.
The original text of the report can be found at the following link (https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(22)01356-6).
