Satiety Hormone Reverses High Blood Sugar, New Research Finds

Lisa Franchi June 17, 2014

The hormone leptin, which is associated with fullness or satiety, reverses hyperglycaemia (high blood sugar) in animal models of poorly controlled type 1 (T1D) and type 2 (T2D) diabetes by suppressing the neuroendocrine pathways that cause blood glucose levels to soar – new research found.

Yale researchers discovered that, in a fasting state, rats with poorly controlled T1D and T2D diabetes had lower plasma insulin and leptin concentrations and large increases in concentrations of plasma corticosterone—a stress hormone made in the adrenal glands that raises levels of blood glucose. They also found that normalising plasma leptin concentrations in the T1D rats with a leptin infusion resulted in marked reductions in plasma glucose concentrations, which could mostly be attributed to reduction in rates of liver conversion of lactate and amino acids into glucose.

Leptin does it by inhibiting the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, a critical neuroendocrine pathway consisting of three major glands that regulate many body processes, including reactions to stress, energy storage, and energy utilisation.

Researchers believe their findings may lead to development of new types of therapies to reduce and reverse uncontrolled hyperglycaemia in patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

"Previous studies by our group found that leptin replacement therapy reversed diabetes and insulin resistance in patients with severe lipodystophy—a loss of fatty tissue that leads to those disorders—by reducing fat deposits in the liver and skeletal muscle," said senior author Dr Gerald Shulman, the George Cowgill Professor of Medicine (Endocrinology) and Cellular & Molecular Physiology, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. "These new data provide an additional mechanism by which leptin therapy reverses hepatic insulin resistance and hyperglycaemia in animal models of poorly controlled type 1 and type 2 diabetes."

The study was published in the journal Advance Online Publication of Nature Medicine.

Source of this article:

Leptin reverses diabetes by suppression of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis