Type 2 diabetes is a clinical disease characterised by disruption to the metabolism of glucose and lipids as well as to the production of and physiological reactions to insulin. These disruptions are partly due to a reduced absorption of glucose in the cells that form the body’s fat and muscle tissue. Now scientists at Karolinska Institutet have established that a type of drug targeted at receptors in the muscle cells increases the metabolism and absorption of glucose, making it a potential tool in the treatment of diabetes. These new findings were published recently in the scientific journal Diabetes. The study has been partly financed with two EU grants from the sixth framework programme (EUGENE2 and EXGENESIS), which were recently awarded to an international network of researchers that includes the authors of the article.
