{"id":340856,"date":"2010-02-19T10:48:25","date_gmt":"2010-02-19T15:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/80beats\/?p=10558"},"modified":"2010-02-19T10:48:25","modified_gmt":"2010-02-19T15:48:25","slug":"dolphins-use-diabetes-like-state-to-control-blood-sugar-80beats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/340856","title":{"rendered":"Dolphins Use Diabetes-Like State to Control Blood Sugar | 80beats"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bottlenosedolphin\"Here’s a neat dolphin trick that doesn’t involve jumping through hoops. While dolphins sleep overnight (with half their brains and one eye at a time<\/a>), they begin to show signs of the kind of insulin resistance that marks type 2 diabetes in humans. But when they wake up and have their breakfast, they switch back to their normal state. A research team led by Stephanie Venn-Watson announced the findings at the American Association for the Advancement of Science<\/a> meeting in San Diego, and said that dolphins’ apparent ability to switch insulin resistance on and off could lead to better understanding of the disease in humans.<\/p>\n

Insulin helps people control their levels of blood sugar, and the resistance to it inherent in type 2 diabetes means those levels can get way too high. The dolphins<\/a>, though, switch on this temporary insulin resistance to their advantage, boosting blood sugar levels overnight. “Bottlenose dolphins have large brains that need sugar,” Dr Venn-Watson explained. Since their diet is very low in sugar, “it works to their advantage to have a condition that keeps blood sugar in the body\u2026 to keep the brain well fed” [BBC News<\/a>]<\/span>.<\/p>\n

<\/span>However, while dolphins can turn this resistance off once they start their day and revert to a normal state, they can have metabolic problems similar to diabetes, too. For 21 weeks, Venn-Watson and her colleagues measured insulin levels in six dolphins two hours after the animals ate. One dolphin that had especially high insulin levels compared to others, also had a 10-year history of iron overload, or hemochromatosis. Iron overload is associated with type 2 diabetes in people, Venn-Watson noted [Science News<\/a><\/em>]<\/span>.<\/p>\n

No other animal has symptoms relating to diabetes so similar to humans, and the connection between the two species is probably our big, glucose-demanding brains. So, Venn-Watson says, studying them could help researchers figure out how to confront insulin resistance in humans: “There is no desire to make a dolphin a lab animal, but what we can do is compare their genes with human genes and look for evidence of a genetic switch” [The Guardian<\/em><\/a>]<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Related Content:
\n80beats: The Cove<\/em> Effect: 70 Dolphins Are Saved From Japan’s Slaughter<\/a>
\n80beats: Sponge-Wielding Dolphins Teach Their Daughters How to Use Tools<\/a>
\n80beats: Great Minds Think Alike: Bats & Dolphins Evolved the Same Gene For Echolocation<\/a>
\n80beats: Stem Cells May Eventually Replace Needles for Some Diabetics<\/a><\/p>\n

Image: flickr \/ Ken Lund<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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Here’s a neat dolphin trick that doesn’t involve jumping through hoops. While dolphins sleep overnight (with half their brains and one eye at a time), they begin to show signs of the kind of insulin resistance that marks type 2 diabetes in humans. But when they wake up and have their breakfast, they switch back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-340856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}