Diabetes is understood in a lot of ways. We know how it causes damage to the body, what damage to expect and more importantly we know just how to preserve the lives of diabetic patients so they can manage the condition and live with it for the foreseeable future. We’re very good at stop-gaps but when it comes to actual cures we’re a little stuck. We could cure type one diabetes if we only understood why the autoimmune reaction which killed off the pancreatic beta cells took place. We can replace those cells but the body just destroys them again and again. We could cure type two diabetes if we better understood insulin resistance, its causes and the reasons behind its formation in the first place.
What’s surprising is that, up until very recently, we didn’t even really know how insulin worked. It’s been common knowledge that the hormone is responsible for taking blood-sugar from the blood and transferring it to the body’s cells so that they can use it as energy. What we didn’t know until a recent study was just how that happened.
This new knowledge, which is being referred to as a ‘molecular handshake’ (as the cells involved appear to shake hands) could well lead to new and pioneering treatments for diabetes. Understanding how something as key to the condition as insulin works in this much detail will lead us to more advanced and intuitive medicines and therapies for diabetics!