Brain Mood Regulator Serotonin May Have Anti-Diabetic Properties

by Tanya Thomas on  November 16, 2010 at 11:08 AM Diabetes News
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Serotonin - a brain chemical known to help regulate emotion, mood and sleep - might also have anti-diabetic properties, new findings by researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center suggest.

The findings also offer a potential explanation for why individuals prescribed certain kinds of anti-psychotic drugs that affect serotonin signaling sometimes have problems with their metabolism, including weight gain and the development of diabetes.

"In this paper, we describe a circuit in the brain that may explain the anti-diabetic actions of serotonin-receptor signaling," said Dr. Joel Elmquist, professor of internal medicine and pharmacology at UT Southwestern and senior author of the study.

"This discovery tells us that drugs that affect serotonin action can have anti-diabetic actions independent of body weight and feeding."

For the current study, the researchers engineered a mouse model in which the expression of a serotonin receptor called 5-hydroxytryptamine 2C was blocked throughout the entire body. Without functioning receptors, the mice developed insulin resistance in their livers.

Previous research has implicated these receptors in the brain in the regulation of energy balance and glucose metabolism throughout the body. When activated by serotonin, this receptor also is known to suppress appetite. Until now, however, it was unclear which type of neuron in the brain mediated the effects of serotonin to regulate glucose, or blood sugar, levels.

To find out, the study authors engineered another set of mice in which the same serotonin receptor was blocked everywhere except within a group of brain cells called pro-opiomelanocortin, or POMC, neurons.

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