| First Author | Absood A | Year | 2013 |
| Journal | PLoS One | Volume | 8 |
| Issue | 2 | Pages | e54351 |
| PubMed ID | 23408938 | Mgi Jnum | J:198317 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:5496335 | Doi | 10.1371/journal.pone.0054351 |
| Citation | Absood A, et al. (2013) Insulin therapy for pre-hyperglycemic beta-cell endoplasmic reticulum crowding. PLoS One 8(2):e54351 |
| abstractText | Insulin therapy improves beta-cell function in early stages of diabetes by mechanisms that may exceed alleviation of glucotoxicity. In advance type 2 diabetes, hyperglycemia causes beta-cell damage and ultimately beta-cell loss. At such an advanced stage, therapeutic modalities are often inadequate. Growing evidence indicates that in early stages of type-2 diabetes and some types of monogenic diabetes linked with malfunctioning endoplasmic-reticulum (ER), the beta-cell ER fails to process sufficient proinsulin once it becomes overloaded. These changes manifest with ER distention (ER-crowding) and deficiency of secretory granules. We hypothesize that insulin therapy may improves beta-cell function by alleviating ER-crowding. To support this hypothesis, we investigated pre-diabetic beta-cell changes in hProC(A7)Y-CpepGFP transgenic mice that develop prolonged pre-diabetes due to proinsulin dysmaturation and ER-crowding. We attenuated the beta-cell ER proinsulin synthesis with a treat-to-target insulin therapy while avoiding hypoglycemia and weight gain. Alleviation of ER-crowding resulted in temporary improvement in proinsulin maturation, insulin secretion and glucose tolerance. Our observations suggest that alleviation of pre-diabetic ER-crowding using a treat-to-target insulin therapy may improve beta-cell function and may prevent further metabolic deterioration. |
