Diabetes is one of the major health problems of the world. There are currently several ways to fight diabetes, but the disease still is poorly controlled in many people.

Abdominal obesity increases the risk of diabetes, since it increases insulin resistance.

Generally, when obesity is discussed there is a focus on fat and exercise. What is not often mentioned is that obesity is an inflammatory state.

Abdominal fat is considered an endocrine organ. The endocrine system is the hormone system. An endocrine organ is an organ that secretes hormones into the body. Some of these signaling compounds and proteins are secreted by the fat cells, others come from other cells that are found located in between the fat cells. A type of macrophage (cells that are part of the immune system) are found within abdominal fat.

Some of the compounds that are released by abdominal fat stimulate an inflammatory response. Recently it has shown that obesity results in chronic subclinical inflammation. Which in plain English means, having continual inflammation at a level that does not give obvious symptoms to the person.

What does this have to do with diabetes?

A recent study in obese mice has shown that if the type of macrophage that is found in abdominal fat, is “knocked out”, that the insulin resistance is reversed very quickly. Within 24 hours of killing the macrophages the insulin resistance was reversed though, of course, the mice were still obese.

As well as furthering the understanding of pathology of type 2 diabetes, this research suggests a new target for drugs for treating diabetes.

photo credit: gotplaid?

[tags]diabetes, macrophages, endocrine[/tags]