Skip to main content
Top

24-02-2017 | Diet | News

News in brief

Fast-mimicking diet regenerates pancreas in diabetic mice

print
PRINT
insite
SEARCH

medwireNews: Results from an animal model indicate that a fasting-mimicking diet (FMD) has profound effects on pancreatic cells, reversing diabetes in mouse models of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

The type 1 diabetes mouse model is based on depletion of beta cells by high-dose streptozotocin; however, the researchers also show that a cell culture serum replicating the conditions of the FMD caused increased insulin production in pancreatic cells taken from patients with type 1 diabetes.

The research, which is published in Cell, comes from Valter Longo (University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA) and co-researchers, the same group that recently published a randomized trial of FMD in human participants.

Six to eight cycles of a low-protein, low-sugar FMD on 4 days of each week returned blood glucose levels to nearly normal in the type 1 diabetes model, and also in a mouse model of late-stage type 2 diabetes. In both models this occurred thanks to a marked decrease in the number of dedifferentiated cells within pancreatic islets and a corresponding increase in the number of fully differentiated beta cells.

This was accompanied by altered gene expression in the pancreatic islets, so that it resembled that seen during embryonic and fetal development, leading the researchers to propose pharmacologic manipulation of these patients with type 1 diabetes patients.

And in a press statement, Longo called for a large trial of FMD in diabetes patients, saying that, hopefully, they could follow the FMD “for a few days each month and gain control over their insulin production and blood sugar.”

By Eleanor McDermid

medwireNews is an independent medical news service provided by Springer Healthcare Limited. © Springer Healthcare Ltd; 2017

print
PRINT

Be confident that your patient care is up to date

Medicine Matters is being incorporated into Springer Medicine, our new medical education platform. 

Alongside the news coverage and expert commentary you have come to expect from Medicine Matters diabetes, Springer Medicine's complimentary membership also provides access to articles from renowned journals and a broad range of Continuing Medical Education programs. Create your free account »