High Stress Can Make Insulin Cells Go Dormant

Diabetes is a disorder in which the body fails to produce enough insulin. Insulin is a hormone that helps transfer glucose from the blood stream into individual cells to be used as energy. The body can, over time, become resistant to insulin, and thus the beta cells of the pancreas must work harder to secrete more insulin to support the body's needs. These beta cells can "lose the ability to keep up" which results in the individual contracting Type 2 Diabetes. It was previously believed that these cells went through apoptosis and lost all of their ability.

This new research in mice with Type 2 Diabetes showed that the beta cells which were previously thought to have died did not in fact die at all. They had lost their insulin-creating function, but were indeed alive in a progenitor, earlier developmental state. If researchers could find a way to re-differentaite cells back into their insulin-creating beta form, the diabetes could be eliminated.

It is speculated that these cells un-differentiate because they are subjected to stress. This stress could be from a range of physiological causes including: pregnancy, obesity, and aging. All of these causes add an increased demand on the beta cells, leading them to regress back into their progenitor state. Potentially, if the stress could be removed, progenitor cells could be prompted to re-differentiate back into their beta state and again respond to glucose and produce insulin.

This article was particularly interesting to me because of its massive implications on the lives of many living with diabetes. The fact that cells may be able to de-differentiate into an alpha form could completely change the way human Type 2 diabetes is treated. This could revolutionize the current treatment of adding insulin (which might actually further the progression of diabetes) to focus instead on re-differentiating the alpha cells into their mature, insulin-producing form.


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