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Allergy drugs may fight diabetes, obesity
Published in Saudi Press Agency on 26 - 07 - 2009


Over-the-counter allergy and
asthma drugs helped obese, diabetic mice lose weight and control
their blood sugar, researchers reported on Monday, according to Reuters.
Three other studies strongly linked obesity and type-2
diabetes to a dysfunctional immune system, and researchers said
these findings could lead to better drugs or perhaps even vaccines
to treat the effects of both conditions.
Rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes are surging around the
world as people eat more and exercise less. The four studies
published in the journal Nature Medicine help explain how obesity
might cause diabetes and how the two together can cause organ
damage, heart disease and death.
Guo-Ping Shi at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard
Medical School in the United States and colleagues found that mast
cells -- the immune cells that get out of control in allergy and
asthma -- were abundant in fat tissues of obese and diabetic
people and mice.
They created obese and diabetic mice by overfeeding them. Then
they gave some of the mice two antihistamines, one called
ketotifen fumarate, sold by Novartis AG under the brand
name Zaditor and generically available cromolyn.
Both help stabilize mast cells in people with allergy or
asthma, Shi said in a statement.
Mice fed a healthy diet improved moderately, while those given
either cromolyn or Zaditor showed dramatic improvements. But mice
given the drug and switched to a healthy diet showed nearly 100
percent recovery in all areas.
"The best thing about these drugs is that we know it's safe
for people," Shi said. "The remaining question now is: Will this
also work for people?"
Shi will test both in monkeys.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease -- one in which the
immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue. The studies in
Nature Medicine suggest that type 2 diabetes and obesity also
involve the immune system.
Satoshi Nishimura of the University of Tokyo and colleagues
found a surge in immune cells or lymphocytes called CD8 T-cells in
obese mice fed a high-fat diet.
Mice engineered to be deficient in CD8 T-cells had markedly
less inflammation, even when fed a high-fat diet.
"So if we can find the molecule that triggers (the production
of) CD8 T-cells, we can block or inhibit it (the molecule) using
drugs," Nishimura said in a telephone interview.
Harvard pathology professor Diane Mathis and colleagues found
T-cells were abundant in the abdominal fat tissue of normal-weight
humans and mice, but absent in obese and diabetic humans and
mice.
Obese mice and people had another class of immune cells called
macrophages in their fat while normal weight people and animals
did not have them.
This could cause the body to stop using insulin correctly -- a
hallmark of type 2 diabetes, said Harvard's Steven Shoelson, who
worked on the study.
"It's possible that the inflammation caused by macrophages
results in insulin resistance," Shoelson said. T-cells may help
control this, he said.
Michael Dosch of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto,
Canada, and colleagues made similar findings. It may be possible
to vaccinate people against type 2 diabetes, they suggested.


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