Lipid in humans can help control blood sugar, says study

The lipid known as 12-HEPE can pave the way for new treatments for diabetes, said the global research team from Brazil, the US and Germany. The team also noted that a drug used to treat urinary dysfunction increases the amount of 12-HEPE which is released into the bloodstream in human patients.

The function of the lipid 12-HEPE was unknown until the group discovered that blood sugar was reduced more efficiently in obese mice treated with 12-HEPE than in untreated mice after they were injected with a concentrated glucose solution.

According to the paper published in the journal Cell Metabolism, the beneficial effect of 12-HEPE on glucose tolerance in obese mice was due to its promotion of glucose uptake into both skeletal muscle and brown adipose tissue.

While white adipose tissue, one of the two types of adipose tissue in mammals, including humans, stores excess energy as fat, the other kind is brown adipose tissue, which converts energy from food into heat and contributes to thermal regulation.

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The study’s first author Luiz Osorio Leiria is a researcher at the University of Campinas’s Biology Institute (IB-UNICAMP) in Sao Paulo State, Brazil.

The discovery lays a foundation for the development of new drugs to combat diabetes and possible new treatments with currently available drugs.

US researchers are currently conducting tests to measure the effects of relatively low doses of the drug on blood sugar levels.

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