Indian men are prone to insulin resistance.Men from India are more likely than those in other large ethnic groups to have a condition that predisposes them to type 2, or adult-onset, diabetes, a U.S. study shows. The condition, called insulin resistance Insulin Resistance Definition Insulin resistance is not a disease as such but rather a state or condition in which a person's body tissues have a lowered level of response to insulin, a hormone secreted by the pancreas that helps to regulate the level , arises when a person's cells fail to respond efficiently to insulin--requiring the body to make extra insulin to move glucose into cells where it's converted into energy. Insulin resistance is often linked with obesity. Researchers enlisted 482 men and women in Connecticut from five ethnic groups--East Asian, Indian Asian, white, black, and Hispanic. All were lean, apparently healthy individuals, and most were in their 20s. When the scientists tested how well each group processed glucose, women showed no difference from each other. However, Indian men were three to four times as likely as the other men to show significant insulin resistance. The findings appear in the Nov. 28 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, usually referred to as PNAS, is the official journal of the United States National Academy of Sciences. . "We're seeing a very important ethnic difference" that could explain a portion of the type 2 diabetes type 2 diabetes n. See diabetes mellitus. seen in India's population, says study coauthor Gerald I. Shulman, an endocrinologist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Howard Hughes Medical Institute, (HHMI), nonprofit medical research organization founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes and largly funded from proceeds of the 1984–85 sale of Hughes Aircraft. Headquartered in Chevy Chase, Md. and Yale University Yale University, at New Haven, Conn.; coeducational. Chartered as a collegiate school for men in 1701 largely as a result of the efforts of James Pierpont, it opened at Killingworth (now Clinton) in 1702, moved (1707) to Saybrook (now Old Saybrook), and in 1716 was School of Medicine. Magnetic resonance magnetic resonance, in physics and chemistry, phenomenon produced by simultaneously applying a steady magnetic field and electromagnetic radiation (usually radio waves) to a sample of atoms and then adjusting the frequency of the radiation and the strength of the images of the Indian- and white-male volunteers showed that Indian men had twice as much fat deposited in their liver tissue. The condition can cause insulin resistance, says Shulman. The fatty livers probably account for these Asian Indian men developing insulin resistance despite being normal weight, he says. Why the men develop fatty liver disease is a mystery. Shulman and his colleagues have begun testing a gene in their search for an explanation.--N.S. |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion