29 November DRC Director's Report - December 2018 November 29, 2018 By The Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center 0 As we come to the end of another successful year for the FOEDRC, I want to thank the FOE and my colleagues within the Diabetes Research Center for continuing to push the research boundaries to improve the lives of many who suffer from diabetes. On a personal note, I received a number of honors for my work this year including being asked to deliver the Presidential Lecture of the University of Iowa, receiving Fraternal Order of Eagles Humanitarian Award and the 2018 History Makers Award - the African American Museum of Iowa (AAMI). My receipt of this recognition is really a recognition of what you do and I consider myself very fortunate to lead such an outstanding organization. To close out the year I thought you might be interested in reading about some ways that our researchers are turning “fun and games” into a benefit for our patients with diabetes. With funding from a pilot grant from the Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center, Philip Polgreen, MD, MPH, Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine and a member of the FOEDRC, along with collaborators in the Departments of Computer Science and Health and Human Physiology, built a mobile-health game called MapTrek designed to increase physical activity levels. The game uses data collected from a participant’s Fitbit and displays it on a map, along with the progress of other participants, creating a virtual race, with games situated in different locations, where participants can view scenic vistas as they progress along a different course each week. In a recent article in The Journal of the American Heart Association, Polgreen and his collaborators demonstrated that MapTrek increased activity over a Fitbit alone. 146 sedentary office workers, who reported sitting at least 75 percent of their workday, were assigned to either the MapTrek group or a Fitbit-only group. Data were collected for 10 weeks. The MapTrek group walked 2,092 more steps per day and were active for 11 more minutes per day compared with the Fitbit-only group. With additional funding from National Institutes of Health (NIDDK), Polgreen and his collaborators are now analyzing what appear to be very promising results for a trial among patients at high risk for developing diabetes. The research group hopes to use this type of intervention to increase physical activity in other groups at risk for diabetes. Related Articles DRC Director's Report - December 2018 As we come to the end of another successful year for the FOEDRC, I want to thank the FOE and my colleagues within the Diabetes Research Center for continuing to push the research boundaries to improve the lives of many who suffer from diabetes. On a personal note, I received a number of honors for my work this year including being asked to deliver the Presidential Lecture of the University of Iowa, receiving Fraternal Order of Eagles Humanitarian Award and the 2018 History Makers Award - the African American Museum of Iowa (AAMI). My receipt of this recognition is really a recognition of what you do and I consider myself very fortunate to lead such an outstanding organization. To close out the year I thought you might be interested in reading about some ways that our researchers are turning “fun and games” into a benefit for our patients with diabetes. DRC Director's Report - November 2018 We have known for a very long time that obesity is associated with many cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. Type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease (where liver stores fat in large lipid droplets), coronary artery disease, heart failure, and many more chronic diseases are all linked to obesity. DRC Director's Report - December 2019 In individuals with obesity and type 2 diabetes a surplus of energy from too much food or increased glucose and lipids can increase tissue metabolism to damaging rates. This is much like a river overflowing its banks, where water no longer channeled in a controlled way can cause catastrophic damage by being in the wrong places. DRC Director's Report - March 2019 Brian T. O’Neill, MD, PhD, assistant professor in the Division of Endocrinology in the Department of Internal Medicine and member of the FOEDRC recently published in the journal Diabetes the discovery that FoxO proteins, which are transcription factors that regulate DNA, are the critical regulators of diabetes-related muscle atrophy. DRC Director's Report - October 2020 Please join us in welcoming Bhagirath Chaurasia, MS, PhD, to the University of Iowa and to the Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center. Dr. Chaurasia also joins the Division of Endocrinology from his previous position as Assistant Professor of Nutrition and Integrative Physiology at the University of Utah. He received his PhD from the University of Cologne in Germany before working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore. DRC Director's Report - January 2019 The new year is always a time to look back and reflect on the many achievements of the prior year. I have been pleased that the Fraternal Order of Eagles has committed continued support to a program that will be overseen by the FOEDRC that seeks to develop new treatments for diabetes and its complications and to bring them ultimately to market. The Bridge to the cure program represents an innovative collaboration and we are excited by what this new year will bring. For this reason, I have chosen to write about one example from a FOEDRC member that recently demonstrated the ability of the compound nicotinamide riboside to restore nerve damage from chemotherapy. We believe that this same mechanism could lead to improved nerve function in people with diabetes. I hope that you will enjoy reading about this exciting advance below. Showing 0 Comment Comments are closed.