1 November DRC Director's Report - October 2024 November 1, 2024 By The Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center 0 Co-Director of the FOEDRC, Andrew Norris, MD, PhD with the help from Joseph Lang, PhD, Professor of Statistics and Actuarial Science, published an important article in the September issue of Diabetes Care focused on more accurately helping patients know if their blood sugars are meeting goals. The publication addresses a critical mathematical issue in the conversion formulas commonly used to predict Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) from average blood glucose levels. Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) is a test that measures the amount of glucose attached to hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells, over a 3-month period. Higher HbA1c levels indicate poor blood sugar control and increase the risk of diabetes complications such as eye, kidney, and nerve damage. The American Diabetes Association recommends maintaining HbA1c below 7% for most individuals with diabetes to minimize these risks. In addition to HbA1c, modern tools like continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) and glucose meters allow frequent measurement of blood glucose levels, providing users with their recent average glucose levels. Dr. Norris and Dr. Lang identified a small mathematical error in commonly used online calculators for converting average glucose to HbA1c. They developed corrected equations that provide more accurate predictions. While these new formulas improve accuracy, there remain ongoing challenges in perfectly aligning average glucose and HbA1c values, as both have inherent variability. This research is a step forward in refining tools used for diabetes management. Related Articles 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 -October 2023 Congratulations to the 2023-2024 FOEDRC Pilot & Feasibility Grant Recipients! The Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center is pleased to announce the results of its thirteenth round of Pilot and Feasibility Grants. These grant awards fund innovative pilot projects by early career investigators who are entering the diabetes research field, or established investigators with innovative ideas that focus on a new direction in diabetes research. The goal of the program is to generate data that will enable awardees to compete for peer-reviewed national funding for diabetes related projects that show exceptional promise. Over a dozen researchers from across the University of Iowa campus submitted meritorious proposals that underwent a comprehensive and competitive peer-review process. Two applicants were selected to receive a catalyst award grant of $50,000 to support their research proposal, with the possibility for a second year of funding, for a total of $100,000 over a two-year period. Two applicants were selected to receive one-year seed grant awards of $5,000 each to support discreet research proposals to obtain data needed to generate essential preliminary data in a diabetes-related project to increase competitive for subsequent extramural funding. DRC Director's Report - March 2024 Diabetes, the leading global journal for basic diabetes research, sought the expertise of Dr. Renata Pereira, a faculty member of the FOEDRC, to review and analyze recent development in specific, but important area of diabetes research. This state-of-the-art review recently authored by Dr. Pereira titled "Mitochondrial Dynamics, Diabetes, and Cardiovascular Disease" was published in the January edition of the journal. DRC Director's Report - September 2024 FOEDRC faculty, Dr. Samuel Stephens, Associate Professor in the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism in the Department of Internal Medicine, has been awarded 2 major grants. The first is a three-year, $1.3M R01 from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) for his project, “Defining the contribution of mitochondrial redox metabolism to support proinsulin folding in the endoplasmic reticulum.” DRC Director's Report - July 2024 Liver health is a critical concern, especially for individuals with diabetes. While it has long been recognized that type 2 diabetes and obesity can damage the liver (a condition known as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis or MASH), the association between type 1 diabetes and MASH has been less clear. Recent evidence has shed light on this connection. It appears that even people with type 1 diabetes can develop MASH, particularly if they are also obese. Understanding how this occurs and identifying strategies to prevent liver damage in type 1 diabetes patients is crucial. DRC Director's Report - October 2019 The current epidemic of obesity is a major contributing factor in the rising rate of type 2 diabetes. Recent work from the laboratory of Kamal Rahmouni, PhD, a member of the Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center (FOEDRC), uncovered a novel and important role for a protein complex called the BBSome in the function of key nerve cells called neurons in small a part of the brain known as the hypothalamus that controls food intake, body’s fat and glucose metabolism. Showing 0 Comment Comments are closed.