Monday, October 1, 2012

High Stress Can Make Insulin Cells Regress




       
High Stress Can Make Insulin Cells Regress
     This article describes the recent advances in research regarding diabetes and insulin production. Scientists formerly thought that people with diabetes became resistant to insulin, which would in turn cause their insulin-producing beta cells to overwork and die out. Now researchers are hypothesizing that the reduction of insulin in the body is actually due to a change in the beta cells’ form, not their death. They believe that the beta cells revert to a “progenitor” state in which they are unable to produce insulin, and reversing this process could help cure diabetes. New research also shows that a protein called FOXO1, which disappears as beta cells stop producing insulin, is vital to keeping the production of insulin in beta cells running. Researchers found that mice that were subject to stress and lacked the protein ended up developing signs of Type 2 diabetes. Some of their beta cells were found to have reverted to the progenitor state, similar to the findings of the earlier study.
            These findings are important because they show that physiological stresses cause an increase in the demand on beta cells for insulin, in turn causing the progression of diabetes. Currently, treatments for diabetes are pushing the production of insulin, which could actually be speeding up the transformation of beta cells to progenitor cells. We could use this information to try to change our methods of treating diabetes and create more efficient and successful drugs.
            I believe that the author could have done a better job explaining the transition between beta cells and progenitor cells. She also doesn’t explain the idea about stress to well; it seems more like an assumption of her own than an idea based on concrete evidence. Other than this, I think she did well summarizing the results of the experiments and describing the future plans on the continuation of this research. 

Schaffer, Amanda. "IN THEORY; Under Stress, Insulin-Making Cells Revert to Nascent State." The New York Times. The New York Times, 02 Oct. 2012. Web. 01 Oct. 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/health/under-stress-insulin-making-cells-revert-to-nascent-state.html?ref=science>.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

In the article I’ve read about creating a new drug to help the treatment for diabetes, I was interested in quite a lot of things. First of all, I did not know that if we were unable to produce insulin then our cells would go back into the “progenitor” state then causing the body diabetes. I could have sworn the insulin was used to store the sucrose in body as it streams along our bloodlines. It fascinates me that this information was out there for all this time. For quite some time, I’ve thought that the reason for diabetes was because you ate too much sweet products in the early age of life. If he/or she hadn’t eat or internalize so much sucrose then wouldn’t diabetes not happen. Then, the article states that the insulin stores the sucrose significantly faster if our stress levels are higher. Amazing, so if we were to decrease our stress levels then wouldn’t diabetes slowly dissipate away from our body till it is completely gone. Since, stress is extremely daily in our lives, wouldn’t taking some kind of medication eliminate somewhat of the stress that we are currently dealing with. It also says that stresses use most of our cells that turned itself into the “progenitor” from the beta cells. If this would to happen when stress be also using most of the insulin in our body and overwork the cells and die? I’m grateful that this article was posted, because it lead to many great discoveries that I never known this entire time. Indeed, I agree that if we were to research this theory a little more in depth then we can actually find a way to eliminate diabetes forever. I also wanted to say that if there were more experiments with this trial and data lab then we can get more detail about the stress levels and insulin in our body. However, this article still truly intrigues me. Great job!

Unknown said...

Maxim Izotov
Article Review
In my opinion, one thing Malika did very well when reciting this article is that she wrote about a topic that I and many other students can relate to. The research had to do with stress and the negative effects of stress. Just like the rats, I and all other students tend to stress a lot. Another thing that Malika did very well was that she reflected on how the article was actually written. Not only was she able to describe the information presented, but she also talked about how it was presented. Now, by knowing how it was written, I am able to tell whether the article was full of information or based on opinion. Last but definitely not least, I found it very clever that Malika connected this study to the real world and explained why this information mattered. She said that this research could help create more efficient and successful drugs. However, something that Malika could work on would be going into more detail. For example, when I read about how the author expressed her opinion in this article, I wanted to see an example, since I would therefore be able to reflect better on whether the information was 100% fact. Another thing that I thought could have been one better in this reflection is that I thought she could talk more about FOXO1. I was able to understand what FOXO1 is, but I could not really reflect that well on how good it actually is because I did not know how FOXO1 differed from the previous antidotes.
I absorbed some information from this article that I found quite appealing, one major example being that stress can cause diabetes. I found this interesting because such a common feeling can cause such major health issues.