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People with diabetes who use insulin to control their blood sugar can experience a dangerous condition called hypoglycemia when blood sugar drops too low. New information on a newly discovered protein called neuronostatin could lead to new methods of treating and preventing hypoglycemia, which is sometimes fatal for people with diabetes.
Stephen Grote, a PhD student working with Gina Yosten, PhD, at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of St. Louis, will present the research at the annual meeting of the American Physiological Society at the 2019 meeting on experimental biology to be held in Orlando, Florida.
For people with diabetes, excessive insulin consumption can cause hypoglycaemia, causing dizziness and drowsiness. Symptoms can progress to confusion, convulsions, and loss of consciousness if blood glucose continues to fall. Severe hypoglycemia can also increase the risk of episodes of hypoglycemia in the following days and lead to a loss of consciousness of the symptoms that usually allow a person to feel a drop in his blood sugar.
"There are very few options for preventing hypoglycemia or treating hypoglycemia unconsciously, so this is not to avoid hypoglycemia as much as possible," Grote said. "Understanding what neuronostatin does and how it works will provide valuable information for the prevention of hypoglycemia and a more complete understanding of how the pancreas manages blood sugar normally."
In previous work, the Yosten research group discovered neuronostatin. Their work has shown that the protein protects against hypoglycemia by allowing the pancreas to release less insulin and produce more glucagon, a hormone that regulates blood sugar.
In a new study in rats, researchers found that injections of neuronostatin resulted in increased blood sugar levels. They also examined human pancreatic tissue and found that it released more neuronostatin when blood glucose was low and that neuronostatin increased further with glucagon treatment. The new research indicates that neuronostatin may be a therapeutic target for the treatment and prevention of hypoglycemia in people with diabetes.
"Neuronostatin is a truly innovative factor, and everything we find there pushes our knowledge of its therapeutic potential a step further," said Grote. "We believe that the study of neuronostatin could ultimately reveal a way to use it to help prevent and reverse vicious cycles of hypoglycemia by helping the body respond appropriately to hypoglycemia with more glucagon. "
The researchers are now working to better understand how neuronostatin affects the release of glucagon and insulin by human islets and how the body regulates neuronostatin secretion. They also use experimental approaches that disrupt the body's response to hypoglycemia to study the impact of this alteration on neuronostatin levels and to determine if it can be used to better manage the immune system. 39; hypoglycemia.
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