New found hormone holds hope for diabetes treatment
The new research suggests that giving diabetics a hormone might help them avoid insulin shots. A newly discovered mouse hormone may open the door to better treatment for diabetes, researchers suggested Thursday. The hormone, called betatrophin, triggers the growth of pancreatic "beta" cells lost or ineffective in diabetes. Insulin is produced by beta cells in the pancreas. Diabetes afflicts more than 25 million people nationwide, according to the American Diabetes Association. It is a condition that causes high blood sugar that can lead to heart disease, kidney failure and blindness. In the journal Cell , a team led by Harvard's Peng Yi reports that betatrophin can produce a roughly seventeenfold increase in these cells, and its increase may partly explain the rapid growth of these cells seen during pregnancy to feed developing fetuses in mammals, including people. "This is really an amazing discovery. Hormones with this kind of effect aren't ...