{"id":111077,"date":"2025-08-26T10:52:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T10:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/111077\/"},"modified":"2025-08-26T10:52:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T10:52:11","slug":"scientists-discover-a-surprising-new-way-to-fight-diabetes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/111077\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Discover a Surprising New Way To Fight Diabetes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\"Doctor<\/a>Scientists in Canada discovered that gut microbes fuel liver dysfunction, but stopping this process at its source dramatically improved metabolic health in mice. Credit: Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Gut microbes produce D-lactate that worsens metabolism. A trap for it restores healthier blood sugar and liver function.<\/p>\n

A group of Canadian researchers has identified an unexpected way to lower blood sugar and protect the liver: by capturing a little-known fuel produced by gut bacteria before it enters the body and causes harm.<\/p>\n

The findings, published in Cell Metabolism, could open the door to new therapies to treat metabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease.<\/p>\n

Microbial molecule disrupts metabolism<\/p>\n

Scientists from McMaster University, Universit\u00e9 Laval, and the University of Ottawa discovered that a molecule generated by gut microbes can cross into the bloodstream, where it drives the liver to overproduce glucose and fat. By designing a method to trap this molecule in the gut before it reaches circulation, they achieved striking improvements in blood sugar regulation and fatty liver disease in obese mice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a new twist on a classic metabolic pathway,\u201d says Jonathan Schertzer, senior and corresponding author and professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster. \u201cWe\u2019ve known for nearly a century that muscles and the liver exchange lactate and glucose \u2014 a process called the Cori cycle. What we\u2019ve discovered is a new branch of that cycle, where gut bacteria are also part of the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1947, Carl Ferdinand Cori and Gerty Theresa Cori were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for showing how muscle-generated lactate fuels the liver to make blood glucose, which then cycles back to power muscle activity. Their work established the foundation for understanding how muscles use one form of lactate (L-lactate) and how the liver uses blood glucose in a tightly coordinated fuel exchange.<\/p>\n

The Canadian team has now shown that obese mice \u2014 and even humans with obesity \u2014 carry elevated levels of a different molecule, D-lactate, in their blood. Unlike the well-studied L-lactate produced by muscles, D-lactate largely originates from gut bacteria and was found to raise blood sugar and liver fat more strongly.<\/p>\n

Blocking D-lactate with a substrate trap<\/p>\n

To stop this, the researchers created a \u201cgut substrate trap\u201d \u2014 a safe, biodegradable polymer that binds to D-lactate in the gut and prevents it from being absorbed. Mice fed this trap had lower blood glucose, less insulin resistance, and reduced liver inflammation and fibrosis \u2014 all without changing their diet or body weight.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a completely new way to think about treating metabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease. Instead of targeting hormones or the liver directly, we\u2019re intercepting a microbial fuel source before it can do harm,\u201d says Schertzer, a member of the Centre for Metabolism, Obesity, and Diabetes Research (MODR) and Farncombe Family Digestive Health Research Institute at McMaster. Schertzer holds a Canada Research Chair in Metabolic Inflammation.<\/p>\n

Reference: \u201cGut substrate trap of D-lactate from microbiota improves blood glucose and fatty liver disease in obese mice\u201d by Han Fang, Fernando F. Anh\u00ea, Dana Kukje Zada, Nicole G. Barra, Rodrigo Rodrigues e-Lacerda, Breanne T. McAlpin, Ryan Wylie, Line Berthiaume, \u00c9tienne Audet-Walsh, Conor O\u2019Dwyer, Peyman Ghorbani, Morgan D. Fullerton, Claudia Gagnon, Andr\u00e9 Tchernof, Andr\u00e9 Marette and Jonathan D. Schertzer, 29 July 2025, Cell Metabolism.
DOI: 10.1016\/j.cmet.2025.07.001<\/a><\/p>\n

Funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).<\/p>\n

Never miss a breakthrough: Join the SciTechDaily newsletter.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists in Canada discovered that gut microbes fuel liver dysfunction, but stopping this process at its source dramatically…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[3149,97,21673,70487,3625,14377],"class_list":["post-111077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-disease","tag-health","tag-liver","tag-mcmaster-university","tag-metabolism","tag-microbiome"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}