WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - For years, researchers have noticed that people living in high-altitude regions are often prone to diabetes. Based on this notion, researchers at the Gladstone Institutes explored the biological reason behind this.
During the research, Isha Jain's team studied hypoxia, a condition where oxygen levels in the blood drop, and how it affects the body. In earlier studies, they saw that mice exposed to low oxygen had much lower blood sugar levels. After eating, their bodies cleared sugar from the blood quickly, which is something that usually lowers the risk of diabetes.
'When we gave sugar to the mice in hypoxia, it disappeared from their bloodstream almost instantly,' said first author Yolanda Martí-Mateos, a postdoctoral scholar in Jain's lab. 'We looked at muscle, brain, liver-all the usual suspects-but nothing in these organs could explain what was happening.'
With a new imaging method, researchers discovered that red blood cells were actually taking in the extra sugar. More studies showed that in low oxygen conditions, mice produced more red blood cells. Not only that, each red blood cell absorbed more sugar than usual.
'Red blood cells represent a hidden compartment of glucose metabolism that has not been appreciated until now,' Jain said. 'This discovery could open up entirely new ways to think about controlling blood sugar.'
To understand how this works, Jain's team worked with experts Angelo D'Alessandro and Allan Doctor, who study red blood cells. They found that in low oxygen conditions, red blood cells use glucose to make a molecule that helps release more oxygen to body tissues, which is very useful when oxygen is scarce. Interestingly, the health benefits of low oxygen exposure lasted for weeks or even months after the mice returned to normal oxygen levels.
'This is just the beginning,' Jain added. 'There's still so much to learn about how the whole body adapts to changes in oxygen, and how we could leverage these mechanisms to treat a range of conditions.'
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