Stomach Bug May Help Control Diabetes, Virginia Tech Researchers Study Bacterium Helicobacter

First Posted: Feb 10, 2013 07:14 PM EST
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That gut wrenching feeling might not be so bad after all...well, at least not in all cases. Virginia Tech researchers just determined how this bacteria deemed as a stomach bug may be able to help control diabetes.

A stomach bacterium that was previously believed to cause health problems such as gastritis, ulcers and gastric cancer may actually play a dual role in helping balance the stomach's ecosystem and controlling body weight and glucose tolerance, according to immunologists at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute of Virginia.

Usually the villain in studies of gastric cancer, peptic ulcers, and other problems is more commonly known as Helicobacter pylori, which infects about half of the world's population. However, most people infected with the bug do not get sick.

"H. pylori is the dominant member of the gastric microbiota and infects about half of the world population. While H. pylori infection can be associated with severe disease, it helps control chronic inflammatory, allergic, or autoimmune diseases," said Josep Bassaganya-Riera, director of the Nutritional Immunology and Molecular Medicine Laboratory and the Center for Modeling Immunity to Enteric Pathogens (MIEP) at Virginia Tech in a Eureka News press release. "We demonstrated for the first time that gastric colonization with H. pylori exerts beneficial effects in mouse models of obesity and diabetes."

During the past 20 years, obesity in the United States has increased dramatically, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 36 percent of U.S. adults and approximately 17 percent of young people aged 2 to 19 years are obese. Obesity is the leading risk factor for type 2 diabetes and the rates of diabetes have increased in parallel with the rates of obesity.

Mice infected with H. pylori showed less insulin resistance than uninfected mice or other mice infected with a more virulent strain of H. pylori, according to the study, which was recently published in PLOS One. Researchers believe that whether the infection is harmful or beneficial depends on the interaction between the genetic makeup of H. pylori and the host's immune response.

New findings even suggest that H. pylori may provide important metabolic traits required to ameliorate diabetes that humans have not evolved on their own.

"This novel finding underscores the complex relationship between H. pylori and humans, with effects not limited to the stomach, but more broadly affecting systemic inflammation and metabolism," said Martin Blaser, the Frederick H. King Professor of Internal Medicine and chairman of the Department of Medicine, and professor of microbiology at New York University School of Medicine.

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