Posts Tagged ‘diabetes study’

The type 2 diabetes stupid study will get $1.3 million in new funding from the National Institutes of Health. It is going to be used to continue with the world’s longest running study on obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Arizona Pima Indians

Obesity and diabetes have been described as the major public health concern of the 21st century says Leslie Schulz, executive dean of Northern Arizona University’s study’s principal investigator. “This study is taking those necessary steps toward finding a way to protect people against these pervasive diseases,” she said.

A related study has shown that Pima Indians in Arizona who have a diet and lifestyle similar to most Americans have a much higher rate of diabetes than the national average: 38 percent verses 8 percent nationally, giving them the distinction of being the most diabetes-prone group in the world.

The Arizona Pima Indians have been genetically linked to a village of Pima Indians living a more traditional lifestyle in a remote, mountainous region of Mexico. A 1995 study of the Mexican Pimas revealed only a rare occurrence of diabetes. Schulz explains that the genetic similarities between the two groups of Pima Indians, along with the contrast in their lifestyles, provides an ideal setting to study the relationship between environmental circumstances and diabetes.

The researchers returned in the fall after 15 years to the Mexican village to study the relationship between the Mexican Pima Indians’ increasingly “westernized” lifestyle and their genetic predisposition for obesity and diabetes.

“Since we were last there, the environmental circumstances of the village have changed,” Schulz says, explaining how the electrical supply to the region has increased, cars have become more prevalent and grocery stores have appeared.

She points out that this changing environment affects non-Pima Mexicans who also live in the village as much as it does the Mexican Pima Indians living there.

“These two groups of people have undergone the same lifestyle changes over the past 15 years but they have different genes,” Schulz explains. “Therefore, we hope to separate out the role genes play versus the role lifestyle plays.”

Question

The researchers are attempting to answer why a person who is genetically predisposed to develop diabetes does not develop it.

ANSWER: GENES AREN’T YOUR DESTINY

Just as genes provide the codes for producing proteins, various chemicals called epigenetic marks sit atop genes and offer basic instructions to them, telling them to switch on or off

Biologists offer this analogy as an explanation: if the genome is the hardware, then the epigenome is the software. “I can load Windows, if I want, on my Mac,” says Joseph Ecker, a Salk Institute biologist and leading epigenetic scientist. “You’re going to have the same chip in there, the same genome, but different software. And the outcome is a different cell type.”

At its most basic, epigenetics is the study of changes in gene activity that do not involve alterations to the genetic code but still get passed down to at least one successive generation. These patterns of gene expression are governed by the cellular material — the epigenome — that sits on top of the genome, just outside it (hence the prefix epi-, which means above). It is these epigenetic “marks” that tell your genes to switch on or off, to speak loudly or whisper. It is through epigenetic marks that environmental factors like diet, stress and prenatal nutrition can make an imprint on genes that is passed from one generation to the next.

Save The Money

Save the money, the studies already prove epigenetics is the main factor in gene expression.