A View of Type 2 Diabetes as Accelerated Aging

The mortality characteristics resulting from type 2 diabetes look very much like an accelerated form of normal aging, as noted in today's open access paper reporting on a large epidemiological study. This mortality characteristic is so much like aging that at times in the past researchers have used animal models of type 2 diabetes as stand-ins for aging, in order to conduct studies more rapidly. Type 2 diabetes is a metabolic disease, a condition that usually arises from excess fat tissue, and is characterized by chronic inflammation, excessive blood sugar, high levels of circulating advanced glycation end-products, and other disruptive influences resulting from too much fat in the body, a state of hyperlipidemia. In some senses being overweight is a form of accelerated aging: it results in a greater burden of senescent cells, for example. Mammals have evolved the capacity to become fat, but not to operate well over the long term while being fat. Perhaps the most important thing to note about type 2 diabetes is that it is reversible even in its late stages; type 2 diabetes is in a sense actively maintained by the presence of excess fat tissue. Sustained low calorie diets and weight loss have been shown to profoundly reverse type 2 diabetes in human clinical trials. Mortality of type 2 diabetes in Germany: additional insights from Gompertz models The Gompertz law of mortality proclaims that human mortality rates in middle to old ages grow log-linearly w...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs