6 July DRC Director's Report - July 2021 July 6, 2021 By The Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center DRC, Iowa, Dr. Abel, Charity Foundation 0 The Spring 2021 issue of the Carver College of Medicine Magazine “Medicine at Iowa”, circulated to all UI alumni, featured an important serendipitous breakthrough by scientists at the University of Iowa Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center (FOEDRC). FOEDRC scientists discovered at safe new way to manage blood sugar non-invasively with electromagnetic fields (EMFs). This discovery could have major benefits in diabetes care, particularly for patients whose current treatment plan is cumbersome and involves checking their blood sugar multiple times daily with finger sticks. Exposing diabetic mice to a combination of static electric and magnetic fields for a few hours per day normalized two major hallmarks of type 2 diabetes, namely reducing blood glucose levels and preventing insulin resistance. Electromagnetic fields are everywhere in modern society. Telecommunications, navigation and mobile devices all rely on electromagnetism to function. Medicine has also harnessed this fundamental force for diagnostic technologies, most notably MRI. While the diagnostic use of EMFs has rapidly expanded, therapeutic applications remain narrow due to a poor understanding of the biological effects. A team of FOEDRC scientists including Drs. Calvin Carter, Sunny Huang, Val Sheffield and E. Dale Abel et al. have been studying the biological effects of electromagnetic fields and made a groundbreaking discovery. The team demonstrated that a unique combination of EMFs, approximately 100x that found at the Earth’s surface, remotely controls blood sugar in animal models of type 2 diabetes. The treatment effects are rapid, reversing insulin resistance within three days and are equally effective when applied for just 7 hours per day during sleep. The treatment was safe, and caused no obvious side effects in these animals studies. The team found that electromagnetic fields activate "magnetic antennae” that are present in mammalian cells, to rebalance the body’s response to insulin. These findings represent a breakthrough in our understanding of how the body responds to EMFs and opens a new field of research into the therapeutic use of EMFs for the noninvasive management of type 2 diabetes. Drs. Carter and Huang have formed a startup company, Geminii, Inc. to translate this novel discovery into a wearable device for the noninvasive management of diabetes. Dr. Carter has also been the recipient of a Bridge to the Cure award from the FOE. A link to the Medicine at Iowa article is included here. These exciting new findings were also published Oct. 6 in the Journal Cell Metabolism. Related Articles DRC Director's Report - August 2021 Postdoctoral research scholar, Calvin Carter, PhD, member of the FOEDRC and recipient of the prestigious FOE Bridge to the Cure award, in collaboration with other FOEDRC researchers, has discovered a safe new way to manage blood sugar non-invasively. Exposing diabetic mice to a combination of static electric and magnetic fields for a few hours per day normalized blood glucose levels and reversed insulin resistance. “The more we look, the more the transfer of electrons seems to underlie diabetes,” Carter said in a Q&A with the American Diabetes Association (ADA). That search was borne out last fall, when Carter and MD/PhD student Sunny Huang, PhD, published ground-breaking findings in Cell Metabolism, showing that static electric and magnetic fields (EMFs) can be used to normalize blood glucose in diabetic mice. Reactions in the press were excited and swift to the researchers’ evidence that blood sugar and insulin sensitivity could be controlled non-invasively. DRC Director's Report - July 2022 Recently, the University of Iowa Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center (FOEDRC) held our annual Diabetes Research Day in collaboration with the University of Minnesota Institute for Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism. This year, Diabetes Research Day was a hybrid event comprised of speakers from both institutions and split into two different events. Our first keynote speaker was Bryan Bergman, PhD. Professor in the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus who gave a talk entitled Intermuscular Adipose Tissue: A Novel Adipose Depot Impacting Muscle Strength, Size, and Insulin Sensitivity in Humans. DRC Director's Report - April 2021 FOEDRC member Matthew Potthoff, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Neuroscience and Pharmacology, and graduate student Sharon Jensen-Cody recently wrote a review article entitled: “Hepatokines and metabolism: Deciphering communication from the liver” that was published in the Journal Molecular Metabolism. This article was featured on the cover of the February issue of the Journal, that increased the visibility of their work. DRC Director's Report - July 2023 Dr. Julien Sebag is leading one of the research projects funded through the Bridge to Cure program. This month, his project has reached a major milestone, having been published in a prestigious journal. In this publication Dr. Sebag recognized the support provided by the FOE through the Bridge to the Cure program. DRC Director's Report - July 2020 The greatest risks to long-term health in people with diabetes arise from diabetic complications, particularly cardiovascular disease. However, the mechanisms by which the metabolic changes associated with type 2 diabetes like insulin resistance increases the risk of heart failure are less understood. In a recent publication in JCI Insight, E. Dale Abel, MD, PhD, and other members of the Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center in collaboration with other institutions, have uncovered an important molecular link between diabetes and heart failure. DRC Director's Report - January 2021 A recent study by a team of UI researchers led by E. Dale Abel, MD, PhD, Director, FOEDRC discovered eating a ketogenic diet rescued mice from heart failure. The study, published in the November issue of the journal Nature Metabolism, was one of three companion papers from independent research teams that all point to the damaging effects of excess sugar (glucose) and its breakdown products on the heart. The UI study also revealed the potential to mitigate that damage by supplying the heart with alternate fuel sources in the form of high-fat diets. Given its need for a constant, reliable supply of energy, the heart is very flexible about the type of molecules it can burn for fuel. Most of the heart’s energy comes from metabolizing fatty acids, but heart cells can also burn glucose and lactate, and also ketones. Showing 0 Comment Comments are closed.