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RESEARCH NEWS Study to look at
the effects of exercise for diabetics
Researchers are to look at the health benefits of exercise for patients with type 1 diabetes (normally controlled by insulin injections) – the first time a study of this kind has been done.
While numerous projects have concentrated on the results of a healthy regime for people with type 2 this new research, to be carried out in the South West of England and the West Midlands, is new for type 1.
Sixty patients will be recruited over the next two years and will be monitored for one year. All will have been newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and will be
placed in two groups. The first will be given standard treatment while those in the second group will be encouraged to carry out a simple and safe exercise programme that raises their level of moderate intensity exercise up to 150 minutes per week, in-line with Department of Health recommendations.
Researchers will focus on whether exercising can help to preserve insulin secretion, crucial for managing blood glucose levels in people with type 1 diabetes and lowering the chances of any further complications from the condition.
http://bit.ly/gM5v9s Great genes!
The age-old conundrum of why some people respond more quickly to fitness regimes could be down to the state of specific genes.
Researchers at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, examined 324,611 individual tiny snippets of DNA (called SNPs or snips) from volunteers who had completed a carefully supervised five-month exercise programme involving pedalling stationary bikes three times a week at controlled and identical intensities.
One SNP in particular, located on a gene known as ACSL1, seemed especially potent, possibly accounting for as much as 6% of the difference in response among people, a high percentage by the standards of genome wide association studies. This gene already has already been shown to play a role in how the body metabolises fats, which might partly explain why it also affects exercise response. But, said Claude Bouchard, who holds the John W. Barton Sr. Endowed Chair in Genetics and Nutrition at Pennington and was lead author of the study, “far more research is needed before we can say” just how any particular gene influences the body’s response to aerobic exercise, let alone what additional genes might be involved in that response. http://nyti.ms/eL7MLb