Gut Bacteria Can Aid Type 2 Diabetes

Two pieces of bad news to get this article going: increasing number of people are affected by type 2 diabetes the world over, and probably a lot more people are affected by it but not realizing it. But modern medicinal research has now made it possible to detect this disease by examining our gut bacteria. The prognosis is derived based on pathogens in the intestines.

Strange as it may sound, those 1.5 kilograms bacteria inside the intestines can provide accurate gauge about our health and wellbeing in general. The theory is that this mix-bag of bacteria tend to be in equilibrium stage when we are healthy, and when this equilibrium is upset, it hints that things are not good. A study conducted in China pulled together some 345 subjects, with 171 of them affected by type II diabetes. Through the intestinal bacteria resident inside the stomach, the team's goal is to establish faster and earlier diagnosis of type 2 diabetes.

The study was included in the recent edition of scientific journalNature. An interesting discovery on the intestines is that type 2 diabetes patients tend to have a more unfavorable bacterial environment, which translate to increased resistance to medicines.

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The finding is not an isolated one. Studies done in Denmark on type 2 diabetes patients have able been able to link this disease to abnormal gut bacteria function and composition. A more advanced stage of study has been planned in Denmark to look at the correlation between people more susceptible to this risk and their gut bacterial content.

The idea is to insert gut bacteria from type 2 diabetes patients into mice and elaborated examination would be performed to see the mice could be affected by this disease through the transmission, suggested Prof Oluf Borbye Pedersen, one of the lead scientists to head the impending project.

Research on gut bacteria goes international

Scores of scientists from the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) and University of Copenhagen have joined hands to further their initial investigations. Indeed the result is impressive as they made several breakthrough discoveries in the subject of 'metagenomics'.

In parallel, European scientists on the EU funded project MetaHIT have identified over 3.3 million genes from those gut bacteria among Denmark and Spain subjects. The discovery is significant in the hope that these genes can provide indicators that help to understand and treat a diverse array of severe diseases. The potential benefits of such discovery can never be undermined, but what is perhaps more significant here is that this represents one of the many integral measures from the medical fraternity to facilitate comprehensive research, across national boundary. Such international research efforts are bound to bring yet groundbreaking discoveries linking intestinal bacteria to health.

Thus far, the study group has successfully integrated the findings of both the European and Chinese researchers, and it points to a potential correlation. The next big challenge is to establish whether the change in the composition of gut bacteria does directly increase the risk type II diabetes or whether this change is simply a manifestation of type II diabetes in the affected person.