Scientists from the Salk Institute and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston have found a new category of molecules created in mouse and human fat, which protects against diabetes.

The researchers discovered that giving the fat, or lipid, to mice that have the equivalent of type 2 diabetes  decreased the heightened sugar levels in the blood. The team also found that in humans with a high risk for diabetes, the amount of the fat is low, suggesting that the lipids could be potentially used as a treatment for metabolic illnesses.

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Fat, like cholesterol, are generally linked to poor health. In recent years, however, scientists have found that not all lipids are bad for the body, such as the omega-3 fatty acids present in the oils of fish. People with early stages of diabetes had low levels of the newly discovered fats, which were named fatty acid hydroxy fatty acids, while diabetes-resistant mice had much higher levels.

"Based on their biology, we can add FAHFAs to the small list of beneficial lipids," said Alan Saghatelian, Salk professor in the Clayton Foundation Laboratories for Peptide Biology and one of the senior authors of the work.

"These lipids are amazing because they can also reduce inflammation, suggesting that we might discover therapeutic opportunities for these molecules in inflammatory diseases, such as Crohn's disease and rheumatoid arthritis, as well as diabetes," Saghatelian said.

The low concentrations of the FAHFAs in cells and tissues let it go unnoticed before. Saghetalian and Barbara Kahn, the vice chair of the Department of Medicine at BIDMC and the other senior author of the work, used the latest mass spectrometry methods to reveal the FAHFAs when they investigated the fat of a diabetes-resistant mouse model bred by Kahn.

"We engineered these mice to have more of a sugar transporter, called Glut4, in their fat because we had shown that when levels of this transporter are low, people are prone to developing diabetes," Kahn said.

By observing how the sugar transporter might prevent the onset of diabetes, the researchers were able to observe that more of the fat was produced in mice that had improved insulin activity.

Tagsfat, Lipid, Diabetes, fatty acid hydroxy fatty acid, Lab rat, Mouse, Type 2 diabetes, Sugar, High-sugar diet