Researchers from Ottawa Health Research Institute have found a protein that causes a brain wasting disease called Creutzfeld-Jakob can cause Type 1 Diabetes as it effects the regulation of glucose in the blood stream.
According to the team of researchers, there is no direct effect of the disease on the regulatory mechanism of blood glucose. The protein which comes in the healthy form in the blood is found as a twisted, deformed protein during the disease.The research conducted on the protein which damages the brain is based on: what is the role of brain in regulation of glucose and how this effective mechanism is hindered.
In Fraser Scott's lab, OHRI the rats prone to diabetes displayed a few strange traits, molecules of prion protein aggregated in the beta cells of islets of pancreas. Destruction of these cells caused Diabetes.
Another thing noticed by them was that after 1-3 days of administering high doses of glucose in the blood of the rats, there was a dramatic change in the pattern of the proteins.
Machinery of the cell is composed of different proteins internally. Though it effects the regulation of blood glucose, the function of prion protein is not completely understood.
A Cell biologist, Scott explained the following in his lab to two people who gained the PhD recently. He said, 'This was an unusual coming-together, a cross-fertilization in our lab, of someone who had a background in prion protein biology _ that's Alex Strom _ and Gen-Sheng Wang, who has considerable expertise in the pathogenesis (beginning) of diabetes.' The two of them worked out a probable solution to this maze.
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Scott said, 'certainly in high-risk families there is an increased risk of developing the disease. So in those families you could think of doing something in a preventive way,' further with information about the causes of the disease, 'you could give people a heads-up of what to avoid.'
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Source-Medindia
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