Do Immune System Ills Help Drive Type 2 Diabetes?

New research suggests that the development of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes may be linked to an immune system reaction gone awry. "The main point of this study is trying to shift the emphasis in thinking of type 2 diabetes as a purely metabolic disease, and instead emphasize the role of the immune system in type 2," said study co-author Dr. Daniel Winer, an endocrine pathologist at Toronto General Hospital in Canada. When the research began, Winer was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University in California. The researchers have identified immune system antibodies in people who are obese and insulin-resistant that aren't present in people who are obese without insulin resistance. They also tested a drug that modifies the immune system in mice fed a fatty diet, and found that the medication could help maintain normal blood sugar levels.

The findings were published online April 17 in the journal Nature Medicine. Funding for the study was provided by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Nearly 26 million Americans have diabetes, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Between 90 percent and 95 percent of these cases are type 2 diabetes, where the body doesn't use insulin efficiently, so the pancreas must make increasing amounts of insulin. Eventually, the pancreas stops making enough insulin to meet the increased demand. The less common form of the disease, type 1 diabetes, occurs when the immune system mistakenly destroys the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. This type of diabetes is considered an autoimmune disease, and isn't linked to how much a person weighs.

Although the causes of type 2 haven't been clear, it's known that the disease runs in families, suggesting a genetic component. Also, while type 2 is strongly linked to increased weight, not everyone who is overweight gets type 2 diabetes. And, that's what got the researchers searching for another factor. Winer explained that excess weight has been linked to inflammation, which can cause the immune system to react. As visceral fat (abdominal fat) expands, it eventually runs out of room, explained Winer. At that point, the fat cells may become stressed and inflamed, and eventually the cells die. When that happens, immune system cells known as macrophages come to sweep up the mess.

Trans Fats While Breast-Feeding May Plump Up Baby

Breast-fed babies are much more likely to put on excess body fat if their mother's diet is high in trans fats, finds a new study. U.S. researchers looked at 96 women and their babies. Infants whose mothers consumed more than 4.5 grams of trans fats per day while breast-feeding were twice as likely to have a high percentage of body fat than babies whose mothers consumed lower amounts of trans fats. The study also found that mothers who consumed more than 4.5 grams a day of trans fats had a nearly six times greater risk of excessive fat accumulation. This suggests that intake of trans fats could have a more significant weight gain effect on women when they're breast-feeding than at other times in their lives, said the University of Georgia researchers.

The findings were recently published online in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Further research is needed to learn more about how a mother's consumption of trans fats may affect her child's long-term health. "It would help to be able to follow the child from when the mother was pregnant, through birth, and then adolescence, so that we can confirm what the type of infant feeding and maternal diet during breast-feeding have to do with the recent epidemic of childhood obesity," study co-author Alex Anderson, an assistant professor in the UGA College of Family and Consumer Sciences, said in a university news release.