Diabetes Research

Diabetes affects 18.2 million people in the United States and is expected to double by the year 2010. Additionally, diabetics who do not have good control over their blood sugar levels are more susceptible to oral health problems than non-diabetics, according to a study that appears in the November/December 2004 issue of General Dentistry, the Academy of General Dentistry's (AGD) clinical, peer-reviewed journal.

New findings by researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center suggest that serotonin -- a brain chemical known to help regulate emotion, mood and sleep -- might also have anti-diabetic properties.

A diet rich in natural antioxidants improves insulin sensitivity in insulin-resistant obese adults and enhances the effect of the insulin-sensitizing drug metformin, a preliminary study from Italy finds.

It is common to find obese people -- even morbidly obese people -- who are healthier than their condition would normally allow. Working with subjects with a body mass index of about 56, a team of researchers in Spain and Cambridge investigated the inflammatory and insulin signalling pathways in the patients' visceral adipose tissue and have published their findings in the Disease Knowledge Environment of the Biochemical Journal.

An ingredient found in abundance in birch bark appears to have an array of metabolic benefits, according to new studies in animals that are reported in the January issue of Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication.

A little bitter with a little sweet, in the form of a nano-complex dietary supplement taken before meals, can result in a substantial reduction of fat and sugar absorption in the body, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Harvard University researchers have found.

A Vanderbilt study examining the impact of the two most commonly prescribed oral diabetes medications on the risk for heart attack, stroke and death has found the drug metformin has benefits over sulfonylurea drugs. It was important to examine the cardiovascular impact of the more commonly used diabetes drugs after recent controversy surrounded another diabetes medication, rosiglitazone, because it was associated with an increased cardiac risk, said lead author, Christianne L. Roumie, M.D., MPH, assistant professor of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics. Smaller studies pointed to a potential advantage of taking the drug metformin but this study confirms this in a large population.

Eating foods at breakfast that have a low glycemic index may help prevent a spike in blood sugar throughout the morning and after the next meal of the day, researchers said at the Institute of Food Technologists' Wellness 12 meeting. These breakfast foods also can increase feelings of satiety and fullness and may make people less likely to overeat throughout the day, according to recent presentations by Kantha Shelke, Ph.D., principal, Corvus Blue LLC, and Richard Mattes, M.P.H., R.D., distinguished professor of foods and nutrition at Purdue University.

In a study, Identification of unrecognized diabetes and pre-diabetes in a dental setting, published in the July 2011 issue of the Journal of...

More young people and adults in their 30s and 40s are being hospitalized for stroke, even as stroke rates are dropping in older people, new data show. The findings, reported this week at the American Stroke Association conference in Dallas, may be a sign that that rising rates of obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure among teenagers and young adults are taking a toll. Or it may simply be that physicians have improved their diagnosis and reporting of stroke in young people during the past decade.

Osteoporosis is more common in women who have fractured bones when they were younger -- and they experience a similar loss in health-related quality of life as those with arthritis, lung disease, diabetes and other chronic diseases.

Among nearly 200,000 individuals, daily use of low-dose aspirin was associated with an increased risk of major gastrointestinal or cerebral bleeding, according to a study in the June 6 issue of JAMA. The authors also found that patients with diabetes had a high rate of major bleeding, irrespective of aspirin use.