Consumption alters liver metabolism and may favor diabetes, researchers find

Researchers from the University of Leicester, in Great Britain, found that tuberculosis disturbs the metabolism of glucose in the body, reports News.ro.

The findings, published in the journal PLoS Pathogenscompleting the knowledge that diabetes reduces the symptoms of tuberculosis.

Importantly, researchers now say that undiagnosed TB could push vulnerable patients to bmetabolic diseases such as diabetes.

Tuberculosis (TB) is a bacterial disease that spreads by inhaling small droplets from the lungs of an infected person. It can affect any part of the body, but it mainly affects the lungs and remains one of the most devastating infectious diseases worldwide, killing nearly 4,500 people every day . RIGHT World Health Organization (WHO).

Every year, worldwide, 10 million people become ill with tuberculosis. Despite being a preventable and treatable disease, 1.5 million people die from tuberculosis each year – making it the world’s leading cause of infectious mortality.

Prevention, through the development of improved vaccines, remains a priority for WHO.

Currently, there is only one vaccine against tuberculosis, and it is mainly given to babies and young children to protect them from severe forms of the disease.

Scientists at a British university are studying tuberculosis in the hope of creating better vaccines, and they are looking in particular at how unknown and subclinical infections can affect health.

This new discovery, they say, could open the way to defining the molecular pathways through which the immune response changes liver metabolism, thus allowing the creation of specific interventions.

“Our research shifts the focus from worsening diabetes to the possibility that late diagnosis of tuberculosis contributes to impaired glucose metabolism, insulin resistance, and therefore it may promote the progression to diabetes in those who are susceptible,” said Monday, in a statementProf. Andrea Cooper, from leicester consumption research department (LTBRG) who is among the authors of the paper.

Because diabetes is detrimental to drug treatment, the research supports the idea that metabolic screening should be included in any drug or vaccine trial, she said.

The study first used laboratory models of pulmonary tuberculosis to examine the changes that occur in the liver during the early stages of the disease. It was found that an immune response was stimulated in the liver cells, and glucose metabolism was altered.

Lead author Dr. Mrinal Das reviewed published metabolic data from humans, where he found that hepatic glucose metabolism was also disrupted when people progressed from latent disease to tuberculosis.

“Our future goal is to define the molecular pathways through which the immune response changes liver metabolism, allowing us to create targeted interventions,” said Prof. Cooper.

The laboratory will also investigate how latent TB (infection with the bacterial agent of tuberculosis without significant symptoms) may affect metabolic health in humans.