Diabetes may originate in your gut

Diabetes may originate in your intestines

ANI: Scientists have suggested that problems controlling blood sugar - the hallmark of diabetes - may begin in the intestines.

The finding may upend long-held theories about the causes of the disease. Because insulin is produced in the pancreas and sugar is stored in the liver, many scientists have looked to those organs for the underlying causes of diabetes.

In the new research, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis studied mice that are unable to make fatty acid synthase (FAS) in the intestine.

FAS, an enzyme crucial for the production of lipids, is regulated by insulin, and people with diabetes have defects in FAS. Mice without the enzyme in the intestines develop chronic inflammation in the gut, a powerful predictor of diabetes.

"Diabetes may indeed start in your gut," said principal investigator Clay F. Semenkovich, MD.

"When people become resistant to insulin, as happens when they gain weight, FAS doesn't work properly, which causes inflammation that, in turn, can lead to diabetes," he explained.

First author Xiaochao Wei, PhD, and Semenkovich, the Herbert S. Gasser Professor of Medicine, professor of cell biology and physiology and director of the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Lipid Research, collaborated with specialists in gastroenterology and genome sciences to determine what happens in mice that can't make FAS in their intestines.

"The first striking thing we saw was that the mice began losing weight. They had diarrhea and other gastrointestinal symptoms, and when we looked closely at the tissue in the gut, we found a lot of inflammation," stated Wei, a research instructor in medicine.

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