Insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar levels, plays a crucial role in the development of type 2 diabetes. So researchers at Cambridge University set out to study the mechanisms that underlie insulin resistance after eating a sugary meal or drink, a critical factor in this condition.
In this study that gathered information from more than 55,000 individuals from around the world – and on a disease of increasing prevalence and affecting millions – the international team analysed genetic data from 28 studies to identify genetic variants that influence insulin levels after a glucose test.
The research uncovered 10 new loci (areas of the genome) associated with insulin resistance, eight of which were also associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes. In detail, within those gene regions, one of the aspects related to the transport of glucose from the bloodstream into cells after ingestion was highlighted. For the researchers, this analysis could pave the way for future treatments for the disease that affects people who struggle to regulate glucose levels due to inadequate secretion or resistance to insulin.
“We know that there are some people with specific rare genetic diseases in whom insulin works completely normally in the fasting state, when it acts mainly in the liver, but very poorly after a meal, when it acts mainly in muscle and fat,” says Stephen O’Rahilly, co-director of the Wellcome-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science, quoted in a university press release (which you can read in the original here). “What is not clear is whether this type of problem occurs more frequently in the general population and whether it is relevant to the risk of type 2 diabetes.” Now, decreased amounts of this same ‘transporter’, GLUT4, in muscle tissue have been associated with this genetic variant.
