The utility of leptin as therapy has been demonstrated in some people with rare metabolic disorders but it was not clear how the hormone that occurs in the fatty tissue is to improve diabetes
Madrid (08/11-01-10) .- Researchers at the University of Rockefeller in New York (United States) have discovered that even a very small amount of leptin hormone can be useful for correcting diabetes.The hormone controls the activity of a gene called IGFBP2 at the liver level, which has antidiabetic effects on animals and could have similar therapeutic effects in humans.The study results are published in the 'Cell Metabolism' magazine.
According to their authors, these discoveries confirm what some researchers had suspected that the antidiabetic effects of leptin are independent of hormone's ability to reduce body weight.
Previous studies had shown that leptin treatment corrects high blood glucose levels and insulin levels in experimental and human models in leptin.
In their current study, researchers identified the lowest leptin dose that could correct insulin resistance and diabetes without taking animals to eat less or lose weight.Then they examined how it is very scarce leptin infusion changed the activity of the genes in the liver of the animals.This analysis led to IGFBP2.
The treatments designed to increase the expression of IGFBP2 in obese and diabetic experimental models corrected their diabetes.Subsequent studies showed that animals treated with the protein responded to insulin three times better than not treated.
The researchers also discovered that patients who had leptin deficit also had lower blood levels of IGFBP2 and that these levels could ascend with a low leptin dose treatment.
Jeffrey Friedman, responsible for the study, points out that future studies will be necessary in models lacking IGFBP2 confirming that protein is necessary for the antidiabetic influence of leptin.Now that researchers know that very high levels of IGFBP2 can act to improve diabetes will also need to study the effects of normal physiological levels.
The authors conclude that their work fixes a set of conditions in which the treatment with leptin potentially improves diabetes independently of its ability to correct weight and consumption of food.This protocol was used to identify IGFBP2 as a gene regulated by leptin whose expression is associated with the antidiabetic effect of leptin.