According to a study in Nature Biomedical Engineering, researchers at Yale have focused non-medicinal treatments for type 2 diabetes, zeroing in on ultrasound treatment.
The study explored how ultrasound treatment can stimulate neurometabolic pathways in the body to inhibit the development of type 2 diabetes in numerous preclinical models.
“Peripheral neurons that sense glucose relay signals of glucose availability to integrative clusters of neurons in the brain,” the authors explained in the journal’s findings. “However, the roles of such signalling pathways in the maintenance of glucose homoeostasis and their contribution to disease are unknown.”
“Here we show that the selective activation of the nerve plexus of the hepatic portal system via peripheral focused ultrasound stimulation (pFUS) improves glucose homoeostasis in mice and rats with insulin-resistant diabetes and in swine subject to hyperinsulinemic-euglycaemic clamps.”
The findings point to a promising milestone for diabetes treatment in which ultrasound could be administered to reduce both glucose levels and insulin, as opposed to just one of them.
“Non-invasive ultrasound activation of afferent autonomic nerves may represent a non-pharmacologic therapy for the restoration of glucose homoeostasis in type-2 diabetes and other metabolic diseases,” the authors concluded.
