Researchers based in Brazil, the United States and Germany have discovered that 12-HEPE, a lipid produced in response to cold by brown adipose tissue in the human body, helps reduce blood sugar. The results of their experiments with mice pave the way for new treatments for diabetes. The group also observed that a drug used to treat urinary dysfunction increases the amount of 12-HEPE released into the bloodstream in human patients. The study is published in Cell Metabolism.
Its first author is Luiz Osório Leiria, a researcher at the University of Campinas's Biology Institute (IB-UNICAMP) in São Paulo State, Brazil. The research was conducted as part of his postdoctoral fellowship at the same university's School of Medical Sciences (FCM-UNICAMP) during a research internship at Dr. Yu-Hua Tseng Lab at Joslin Diabetes Center, an independent institution affiliated with Harvard Medical School…
