New drug promises to eliminate insulin resistance definitively

A daily dose of this drug eliminated insulin resistance in mice.The next step will be to confirm if the medicine is safe in clinical tests with humans.

In addition to genetic influence, it is known that type 2 diabetes is caused by an unhealthy diet and an overweight that are maintained for long periods.The pancreas is exhausted and loses the ability to produce sufficient insulin.

When it happens that body cells stop reacting to the insulin produced by the pancreas, blood sugar reaches dangerous levels, which is known as insulin resistance.Not being recognized, the pancreas continues to produce insulin until it can no longer.Then diabetes is unleashed.

Currently, the medications used only keep the disease at bay, but do not eliminate it.Now a new drug developed by scientists from the University of California could change the situation.

As New Scientist reports, a daily dose of this drug eliminated insulin resistance in mice.This is the first time that a treatment against type 2 diabetes results.

The researchers had the hypothesis that an enzyme was responsible for causing insulin resistance.This enzyme is called LMPTP, is found in the liver and seems to interact with cells in such a way that they become indifferent to insulin.

The team thought that when creating a new medication, especially designed to make obstacles to the LMPTP progress, the cells would react to insulin normally.The best thing is that the work was not in vain, because they were right.

"Our findings suggest that LMPTP is a key promoter of isnulin resistance and that their inhibitors would be beneficial to treat type 2 diabetes," the authors notice in their article in Nature.

For their study, the researchers administered the medicine orally to a group of laboratory mice, which had been fed with a hypercaloric diet to develop type 2 diabetes.

The mice did not experience side effects under the drug, and their cells reacted to the presence of insulin.Their glucose levels dropped normally for at least one month.

The next step will be to confirm if the medicine is safe in clinical tests with humans.

It is the time when a drug like this is needed more than ever.Type 2 diabetes is projected as the seventh cause of premature death in the world around 2030 and obesity figures continue to increase.Maybe the new medicine changes the rules of the game.