Study Links Pollutants, Metabolic Complications; Glucose Meter Recall

By Diane Fennell Study Links Pollutants, Metabolic Complications A type of environmental contaminant known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs) is associated with the development of certain metabolic complications of obesity such as Type 2 diabetes, according to researchers from the University of Bergen in Norway. Previous studies have highlighted potential links between diabetes and a variety of chemicals, including bishphenol-A, phthalates, air pollutants, and perflourinated compounds (PFCs). Although there is a strong association between obesity and conditions such as insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes, there is a subset of obese people, known as "metabolically healthy obese," who have the same risk for conditions such as heart disease as people who are not obese. POPs — manmade chemicals used in agricultural and manufacturing process that can be found virtually worldwide — have recently been shown to speed up the development of prediabetes and obesity in mice. To determine whether these contaminants are associated with metabolic complications in obese people, researchers looked at 76 obese women who were of similar age, body-mass index (a measure of weight relative to height), and fat-mass index, analyzing the concentration of 21 different types of POPs in their blood. They found that women with cardiometabolic complications had significantly higher concentrations of 12 of the 18 detectable pollutants than the metabolically healthy but obese partic...
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - Category: Diabetes Authors: Source Type: blogs