New Target for Treatment of Type 2 Diabetes Identified

In the skeletal muscle of those with diabetes it was found that an enzyme present in the mitochondrial cells is decreased, this finding holds the key to fight the disease.

A paper in published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that the enzyme, Sirt3, is decreased in the skeletal muscle of humans and animals with diabetes by at least half, compared to those without diabetes and that this may contribute to development of insulin resistance, one of the earliest manifestations of the disease. Sirt3 is found in the mitochondria, the power producers of cells that convert energy into usable forms. 
"Ours is perhaps the first study to understand what is going wrong in the mitochondria of those with diabetes," said senior author C. Ronald Kahn, M.D., Head of the Joslin Section on Integrative Physiology and Metabolism and the Mary K. Iacocca Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. "Many studies have shown that the mitochondria don't work well in those with diabetes. This points to a cause of why they don't work well." 
Dr. Kahn said the study sought to look at how decreased Sirt3 levels might affect the metabolism of cells, particularly how it could affect insulin action in cells. "We know that one of the hallmarks of early diabetes is insulin resistance in muscle, but we didn't know what caused it," he said.