For men and women with diabetes across the world, hypoglycemia treatment is actually a matter of life and death, as they're often balancing between the excessive consumption that could lead to effects like blindness, and low levels of blood sugar, which can lead to fainting and seizures; now, a new discovery could save millions of lives.
The American Diabetes Association defines this condition as low presence of glucose in the blood; as a matter of fact, it's considered a shock reaction to high insulin; the hypoglycemia treatment will often entail the consumption of simple carbohydrates and sugars immediately and, if left untreated, it could lead to seizures and unconsciousness - sometimes as serious as entering a comatose state.
According to Science Daily, researchers from both sides of the Atlantic discovered the new hypoglycemia treatment, in a joint effort between scientists from the United Kingdom and the University of Michigan Comprehensive Diabetes Center, in a paper entitled "Leptin-inhibited PBN neurons enhance responses to hypoglycemia in negative energy balance" and published recently in the Nature Neuroscience journal.
As the researchers themselves published in a statement, the newly discovered hypoglycemia treatment comes from the realization that there's a pathway hidden within the brain, called parabrachial nucleos, which produces cholecystokinin (CCK), a hormone that can act as a sensor of glucose levels in the blood; the hormone is actually one of the factors responsible of creating appropriate body responses when the sugar count goes too low.
"When patients suffer repeated bouts of hypoglycemia they can develop 'unawareness,' which means they find it difficult to detect symptoms that their blood sugar levels are falling and it is this group particularly that we hope could benefit from our findings in regard to the role played by CCK," said Lora K. Heisler, one of the authors of the study, according to HCP Live.
The new discovery could lead to a more comprehensive hypoglycemia treatment, as from this notion there could be new drugs created to fight the condition, based on the recently found hormone.
