Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 2, 1995 TAG: 9502020044
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-13 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Short
If so, scientists may be able to treat those cases better by developing drugs to shut off the gene, said researcher Dr. Ira D. Goldfine.
More than 95 percent of the nearly 14 million Americans with diabetes have so-called type II or adult-onset diabetes, which often develops after age 30. In type II diabetes, a person's body fails to respond normally to insulin, which is supposed to lower blood sugar levels.
The new work identified a protein that may hinder the body's response to insulin. The protein may cause diabetes if the body makes too much of it on orders of the hyperactive gene, Goldfine said.
It's not clear yet what percentage of type II diabetes may be due to this gene, he said.
The work is reported in today's issue of the journal Nature by Goldfine, director of diabetes and endocrine research at the Mount Zion Medical Center of the University of California, San Francisco, and his colleagues.
The protein, called PC-1, is normally found in many cells of the body in small amounts, but its normal role is not known, Goldfine said.
Researchers found evidence that PC-1 was overproduced in cells of seven of nine type II diabetes patients. They also found that if they made different cells in a test tube overproduce PC-1, the cells lost much of their ability to respond normally to insulin.
by CNB