Through the eyes, alterations can be diagnosed in the function of islets that can lead to the development of diabetes.

It is possible that in the future we can measure our blood sugar levels through the eyes.As?According to a team of researchers, our eye can be a kind of "window" that allows us to see how insulin producing cells in the pancreas are working, information that could be especially useful for people with diabetes.

Researchers at the Karolinska Institute, in Sweden, have discovered a way to study the regulation of glucose in the body based on the transfer of essential insulin producing cells of the pancreas to the eye.His work is published today in pnas.

Langerhans islets, a part of the pancreas, are responsible for producing and secreting insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar levels.After a meal, the hormone is released in the blood in an amount that is in direct proportion to that of food ingested, so that blood insulin levels vary from one meal to another and between each individual.In the case of situations such as obesity, large amounts of insulin are needed to compensate for high food consumption and hormone insensitivity.

It is known that Langerhans islets try to adapt to these types of situations by increasing the number of beta cells of insulin producers and/or modulating insulin secretion in response to sugar intake.This plasticity is essential for the maintenance of normal blood sugar levels, and when it does not work in the right way, it causes diabetes, a serious illness that has reached pandemic proportions.And the greatest obstacle to the study of the exact mechanisms involved in Langerhans islets and how they adapt to individual conditions is their inaccessibility.Now, however, thanks to this work, a new way of studying insulin producing beta producers seems to have been found: by transfer of the Langerhans islets in the eye.

'Informators' islets'

"What we have done is to do the optically accessible cells through the graft of a small number of 'informed islets' in the eyes of the mice, which allows usOLOF BERGGREN, director of the Rolf Luft Research Center for Diabetes and Endocrinology.In this way, he affirms, "we can really study the beta cells of insulin in an unthinkable way so far."

Speaking to ABC, Berggren points out that in this work it is demonstrated that the eyes can be used as a "natural window" to see what happens in our body.Thus, he explains - «we can follow the functional status and the morphological changes that occur in pancreatic islets, which means that we can diagnose alterations in the function of islets that can lead to the development of diabetes, and also,Control the effects of a treatment on the function of islets ».

'transplanted islets'

With this approach the researchers believe that the eyes could be used as a kind of "chivato" of the activity of the pancreas and would allow readings of the state of the pancreas under different conditions, both in healthy and sick people."The functional and morphological changes that occur in the 'transplanted islets' are identical to those produced in the pancreas," says Erwin illegals.

in humans

Researchers are convinced that this "surveillance" system could be applied similar to human beings.«The transplant of a few pancreatic islets in the anterior chamber of the eyeIt represents a small surgical intervention from which the eye recovers very quickly and completely, ”they say.And we have already demonstrated previously in Babuinos that even the presence of a large number of transplanted islets in the anterior chamber of the eye does not cause any important adverse effect on the structure and function of the eye.Therefore, "we believe that the vision of the eye and the function will not be affected in humans and that the" informant islets "transplant will allow supervising the state of the pancreas and the effectiveness of personalized treatment regimes."

Using this new monitoring and pharmacological treatment system, scientists have reduced food consumption in obese mice models which means that they have stopped the growth of the beta cell population."We are also going to use the system to identify new pharmacological substances that regulate the plasticity and function of beta cells," Professor Berggren told ABC.