Chronic inflammation is increasingly the focus of research. A recent study has now found differences in inflammation indicators between novel diabetes subgroups. But what does that mean for the future?
Symptoms that increase with age, such as cardiovascular diseases, kidney damage or dementia, are common consequences of type 2 diabetes. In addition to metabolic disorders, chronic inflammatory reactions are important causes. The inflammatory cytokines that are typical for this can have numerous effects on various organs. One of the consequences of this is that the organs no longer respond adequately to insulin.
A new analysis of the German Diabetes Study (GDS) of the German Diabetes Center (DDZ) examined the differences between individual diabetes subgroups in the biomarkers for inflammation. Biomarkers are indicators that appear in the blood or tissue and other parts of the body and are typical of certain changes in the body such as inflammation.
In the current study, 74 biomarkers covering a broad spectrum of inflammatory processes were measured in over 400 test persons. The result: The novel diabetes subgroups show a number of specific differences that could enable a better determination of the risk of diabetes-related complications.
The German Diabetes Study (GDS) previously made it possible to identify five subgroups (clusters) of diabetes with different courses: severe autoimmune diabetes (SAID), severe insulin deficiency diabetes (SIDD), severe insulin-resistant diabetes (SIRD), and moderate obesity related diabetes (MOD) and moderate age-related diabetes (MARD). The current study shows that these subgroups differ not only in terms of age and metabolic characteristics, but also in terms of biomarkers for inflammation.
Given the critical role inflammatory processes play in complications associated with diabetes, these differences may also be related to the severity of clinical diabetes progression.
It is interesting that this study in people with newly diagnosed diabetes reveals early disorders and can thus contribute to the early detection of the consequences of diabetes. As a result, these results could enable early therapy in individual diabetes subgroups. “
Michael Roden, Professor and Scientific Director, German Diabetes Center
Roden is also a board member of the DDZ. The highest blood biomarker levels were observed in the diabetes subgroup SIRD, which is characterized by pronounced insulin resistance. This underlines the importance of overweight / obesity, which is particularly related to inflammation and insulin resistance.
On the other hand, the SIDD subgroup, which is mainly characterized by insulin deficiency, had the lowest biomarker values.
“This correlation between high levels of inflammation markers and pronounced insulin resistance indicates a special contribution of inflammatory processes in the SIRD subgroup,” said Dr. Christian Herder, head of the inflammation working group at the DDZ.
“It will be a few more years before we can derive a specific recommendation for diabetes therapy from these results. However, the results are extremely relevant for diabetes complications and their understanding. Future studies are needed to investigate the extent to which differences in the inflammation profiles -related biomarkers may explain the differences between the diabetes subgroups in terms of their risk of developing complications associated with diabetes. “
Source:
German Center for Diabetes Research DZD
Journal reference:
Herder, C. et al. (2021) Differences in Inflammation Biomarkers Between Novel Subgroups of Emerging Diabetes. Diabetes. doi.org/10.2337/db20-1054.
