23 November DRC Director's Report - November 2020 November 23, 2020 By The Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center FOE, DRC, Diabetes Research Center, Iowa 0 FOE Diabetes Research Center scientists from the University of Iowa have 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 normalizes two major hallmarks of type 2 diabetes, namely reducing blood glucose levels and preventing insulin resistance. These new findings were published Oct. 6 in Cell Metabolism. The use of electromagnetic fields is ubiquitous 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. Drs. Calvin Carter, Sunny Huang, Val Sheffield, E. Dale Abel et al. study the biological effects of electromagnetic fields and have made a groundbreaking discovery. The team demonstrates that a specific set 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 open a new field of inquiry into the therapeutic use of EMFs for the noninvasive management of type 2 diabetes. Drs. Carter and Huang have formed a startup, Geminii, Inc. to translate this novel discovery into a wearable device for the noninvasive management of diabetes. Related Articles 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 - 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 - May 2020 Diabetes is a disease of uncontrollable high blood glucose. Insulin, the hormone that reduces blood glucose, is secreted from beta cells embedded in the pancreas in structures called islets. Although overnutrition has been blamed for the inability of beta cells to secrete enough insulin in type 2 diabetes, it has remained unclear how overnutrition causes beta cells to fail. This is a critical question to solve in order to develop effective therapy to protect beta cells in conditions of overnutrition and to cure type 2 diabetes. DRC Director's Report - December 2020 Dr. Vitor Lira Associate Professor of Health and Human Physiology and member of the FOEDRC was recently awarded a new grant from the National Institutes of Health in the amount of $563,723. The grant entitled: “Molecular regulation of protein turnover in skeletal muscle” will study an important condition that afflicts many individuals as they age, particularly those with diabetes. Aging-related skeletal muscle atrophy and weakness, also referred to as sarcopenia, affects millions of people contributing to the development of several chronic conditions associated with poor health outcomes, such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and neurodegenerative diseases. Although sarcopenia remains poorly understood and lacks effective therapy, aged muscles manifest a problem of poor protein turnover or recycling which is called proteotoxicity. DRC Director's Report - November 2023 A critical function of the Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center is to train new generations of diabetes researchers. To this end, since 2017, the FOEDRC has received a “T32” grant from the NIH that funds up to six annual positions for postdoctoral fellows to receive advanced training in diabetes research. Postdoctoral fellows are scientists and/or physicians who have recently received their doctorate degree and who are in the final stages of training to become independent scientists. 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. 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