Pancreatic islet. Image courtesy of Shutterstock
More than 400 million people worldwide suffer from type 2 diabetes, a disease characterised by increased blood glucose levels, because the body’s normal way of controlling insulin release breaks down.
But insulin is only one half of the story about what goes wrong in type 2 diabetes: the release of another hormone called glucagon, which has an opposite effect to insulin, is also disrupted in type 2 diabetes.
Now a study led by Professor Patrik Rorsman from the Radcliffe Department of Medicinehas found that exposure to high glucose levels for as little as 48 hours changes glucagon secretion from the pancreas – but there may be a way to reverse these effects to restore normalcy.