Groundbreaking new research could see diabetes sufferers treated with a replica drug of the skin secretions of a South American frog.
Researchers have found type 2 diabetes, a disease for which the UAE has the second highest rate in the world, could be treated with pseudin-2, a compound from the South American ‘shrinking’ frog which stimulates insulin release, British broadcaster the BCC reported on Monday.
Scientists from the UAE University and the University of Ulster have tested a synthetic version of pseudin-2, the compound protecting the frog from infection.
The ‘shrinking’ frog gets its name from the fact that it begins life as a 27 centimetre tadpole before decreasing to 4 centimetres in adulthood.
The researchers found pseudin-2 stimulated the secretion of insulin in pancreatic cells in the laboratory with no toxic effects. The synthetic version was better at stimulating insulin than the natural compound, opening the way for it potential development as a drug for treating diabetes.
Study leader Yasser Abdel-Wahab, senior lecturer in biomedical sciences at the University of Ulster, said there had been a lot of research into amphibian skin secretions.
Another recently developed diabetes drug, exenatide, was developed from a hormone in the saliva of a lizard found in US and Mexico.
“We found that it [exenatide] stimulated the secretion of insulin and that the synthetic version is more potent that pseudin-2 itself. More research is needed, but there is a growing body of work around natural anti-diabetic drug discovery that is already yielding fascinating results,” Abdel-Wahab said.
Type 2 diabetes, often associated with being overweight, develops because the body does not produce enough insulin, or when the insulin that is produced does not work properly meaning sufferers cannot regulate their blood glucose levels.
One out of every five people in UAE aged 20 to 79 live with the disease, according to figures from the World Health Organisation (WHO).
All GCC countries have an unusually high prevalence of type 2 diabetes, relative to the rest of the world, and the health complications associated with the disease are expected to dramatically impact the region in the future.
Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman are among the top 10 countries in the world suffering from the blood disease.
The UAE (19.5%) pips Saudi Arabia (16.7%) into second place in the list of GCC countries with the highest rates of diabetes, with Bahrain in third (15.2%), Kuwait in fourth (14.4%) and Oman in fifth (13.1%), according to WHO.
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