Health Bulletin

Newly discovered hormone could aid diabetics

Last month, researchers revealed that a new hormone found in mice could aid with better treatment of diabetes. The hormone, called betatrophin, triggers the growth of pancreatic 'beta' cells lost or ineffective in diabetes. Insulin is produced by beta cells in the pancreas.

In the journal Cell, a team led by Harvard's Peng Yi reports that betatrophin can produce a roughly seventeenfold increase in these cells, and its increase may partly explain the rapid growth of these cells seen during pregnancy to feed developing foetuses in mammals, including people.

"This is really an amazing discovery. Hormones with this kind of effect aren't discovered very often, and this opens a whole new pathway to treating diabetes," says diabetes expert Jake Kushner of the McNair Medical Institute at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, United States, who was not part of the study team.

He cautioned that the hormone's effects, which the study team sees as isolated to beta cells, need to be thoroughly investigated in animal studies for safety.

The hormone was discovered almost by accident, as the Harvard team investigated a research compound that basically recreates what happens in diabetes. The compound short-circuits the release of insulin in response to increasing blood sugar. When that happened to the mice in the study, their production of the hormone betatrophin ramped up and spurred the growth of insulin-producing cells.

Digicel encourages employees to 'Be Well'

Digicel has plunged full speed with creating a wholesome environment for its employees with its brand new health and wellness programme - BEing Well. Under the tagline 'creating a healthier you', BEing Well seeks to promote three core areas of wellness - financial, physical and emotional - and represents an investment in its employees towards them enhancing their individual wellness status.

BEing Well was officially launched on April 19 with Her Excellency Lady Allen in attendance at a grand wellness fair in the telecommunications company's headquarters parking lot to hundreds of employees.

Over 25 exhibitors showcased their company's products and services at the fair with free blood sugar and cholesterol checks, cooking demos, spa services and dance demonstrations, among a number of other activities, all geared at encouraging and empowering the employees towards a healthy lifestyle.

Largest recent study of AIDS vaccine shut down

Last month, the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the United States pulled the plug on the largest current study of a potential AIDS vaccine, a US$77 million project, after an independent panel of safety experts found that participants getting the vaccine appeared to be slightly more likely to contract the virus and no better at suppressing its replication than those who got a placebo.

Investigators involved in recruiting volunteers and running the trial at 21 sites across the United States were ordered to stop immunising volunteers with the genetically engineered HVTN 505 vaccine and to inform the subjects enrolled in the study whether they got the experimental vaccine or the placebo.

Nearly 2,500 subjects participated - 1,250 men or transgender people who have sex with men got the investigational vaccine, while 1,244 received the placebo vaccine.

The patients will continue to be monitored to see any long-term effects.