DALLAS — Dec. 26, 2010 — New findings by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers may solve a 17-year-old mystery about how the so-called “starvation hormone” affects multiple biological systems, including preventing insulin sensitivity and pr…
AUSTIN, Texas — Because of impairments in their insulin sensitivity, obese individuals demonstrate different brain responses than their normal-weight peers while completing a challenging cognitive task, according to new research by psychologists …
Using high-resolution microscopy, researchers at the National Institutes of Health have shown how insulin prompts fat cells to take in glucose in a rat model. The findings were reported in the Sept. 8 issue of the journal Cell Metabolism.
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A child who is overweight and unfit may already be on the road to developing insulin resistance, an early sign of diabetes, researchers reported today at the American Heart Association’s 43rd Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention. Insulin sensitivity is a measure of how well the body responds to insulin, a hormone that transports carbohydrates from the blood into cells where they are turned into energy. High insulin sensitivity means the body is responding well to insulin. Low insulin sensitivity ? also called insulin resistance ? is often a precursor to diabetes.
A new study in female mice links estrogen, lower blood pressure, and insulin resistance, despite a high fructose diet. The experiments demonstrate that the effects of a fructose diet on metabolism and blood pressure are dependent on sex gender. Female rats are protected against fructose-induced hypertension, unlike their male counterparts, and the mechanisms responsible for this protection appear to be related to female sex hormones. Furthermore, there appears to be a sex difference in the vascular actions of insulin, which may also be involved in the mechanisms responsible for the sex differences observed in this experiment. The results of these experiments represent a novel finding into the interrelationship among hyperinsulinemia, insulin resistance, and hypertension. The potential existence of sex differences in this intriguing association might help elucidate the mechanisms involved and are worthy of further investigation.