A research team at Tohoku University, in collaboration with the University of Tsukuba, discovered that oxidative stress in the brain causes diabetes and elucidated the mechanism.It is expected to lead to an approach to treatment.
It has long been known that diabetes increases oxidative stress, but the role it plays has not been elucidated.In particular, since the hypothalamus of the brain plays an important function as a control tower for metabolic regulation, its association with diabetes has attracted attention, but the study of increased oxidative stress in the hypothalamus is difficult to approach to clarify it. Therefore, sufficient knowledge was not obtained.
In this research, as a method for increasing oxidative stress, we focused on a group of proteins (selenoprotein group) containing seleno, which is important for suppressing oxidative stress, and the research team previously created it by gene recombination method. We used mice that can specifically reduce the expression of genes essential for selenoprotein group synthesis.
As a result, when oxidative stress accumulates in the brain, it reduces the number of nerve cells in the hypothalamus region, which is important for systemic metabolic regulation, and attenuates the actions of insulin, which is a hypoglycemic hormone, and leptin, which is an obesity-suppressing hormone. Through them, it was found to cause obesity and diabetes throughout the body.Furthermore, it was clarified that it is possible to prevent obesity and diabetes by suppressing oxidative stress in the brain.
The results of this study show that the protective action of brain nerve cells can prevent the onset and exacerbation of obesity and diabetes.From this, it is expected that it will be possible to develop new preventive and therapeutic methods based on the suppression of oxidative stress in the brain.
