Origins of diabetes may be different in men and women
Development of the disease depends on location and features of fat tissue
in each sex

Date:
March 23, 2022
Source:
Concordia University
Summary:
Researchers look at how fat tissue from different parts of the body
may lead to diabetes onset in men and women. They reviewed almost
200 hundred scientific papers looking for a deeper understanding
of how fat operates at the surface and tissue level, and the
mechanisms by which that tissue contributes to diabetes onset.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
Over the past four decades, global cases of Type 2 diabetes mellitus have skyrocketed. According to the World Health Organization, the number of
people estimated to have the disease jumped from 108 million in 1980
to 422 million in 2014, with the fastest growth observed in low- and middle-income countries.


========================================================================== Although the disease is common, there is still much research left to
be done to fully understand it. For instance, while diabetes is linked
to obesity, researchers still do not know the exact reasons why obesity
causes diabetes.

In a new paper published in the journal Obesity Reviews, Concordia
researchers Kerri Delaney and Sylvia Santosa look at how fat tissue
from different parts of the body may lead to diabetes onset in men and
women. They reviewed almost 200 hundred scientific papers looking for a
deeper understanding of how fat operates at the surface and tissue level,
and the mechanisms by which that tissue contributes to diabetes onset.

"There are many different theories about how diabetes develops,
and the one that we explore posits that different regions of fat
tissue contributes to disease risk differently," says Kerri Delaney,
a PhD candidate at Concordia's PERFORM Centre and the paper's lead
author. "So the big question is, how do the different depots uniquely contribute to its development, and is this contribution different in
men and women?" From surface to cell level Men and women store fat
in different places. Diabetes, like many other diseases, is closely
associated with abdominal fat. Women tend to store that fat just under
the skin. This is known as subcutaneous fat. In men, abdominal fat is
stored around the organs. This is visceral fat.

Fat appears to exhibit different features in men and women. They grow differently, are dispersed differently and interact with the inflammatory
and immune system differently. For example, in men fat tissue expands
because the fat cells grow in size; in women, fat cells multiply and
increase in number.

This changes with the loss of the protective hormone estrogen that
disappears with menopause and may explain why men are more susceptible
to diabetes earlier in life than women.

Working from the hypothesis that diabetes risk is driven by expansions
of visceral fat in men and of subcutaneous fat in women, the researchers
then looked through the papers to see what was happening in the cell-level microenvironments.

Though more research is needed, there were overall differences observed
in the immune cell, hormone, and cell signalling level in men and women
that seem to support different origins in diabetes between the sexes.

Delaney and Santosa hope that by identifying how diabetes risks are
different in men and women, clinical approaches to treatment of the
disease can be better defined between the sexes.

"Currently, the treatment of diabetes is similar for men and women,"
says Santosa, an associate professor in the department of Health,
Kinesiology and Applied Physiology. "If we understood the differences
between them better, we could consider these mechanisms in recommending treatments to men and women based on how diabetes medications work."

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Concordia_University. Original written
by Patrick Lejtenyi. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Kerri Z. Delaney, Sylvia Santosa. Sex differences in regional
adipose
tissue depots pose different threats for the development of Type
2 diabetes in males and females. Obesity Reviews, 2022; 23 (3)
DOI: 10.1111/obr.13393 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220323125121.htm

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