New Hormone Complex Affecting Diabetes

Sometimes it seems as if a new factor that affects diabetes is announced every week. The latest one is called fabkin, which sounds to me like a detergent or a new diet craze. And fabkin is not one factor but a complex of of several. The name comes from fatty-acid-binding protein 4 (FABP4), which forms a functional hormone complex with two kinases, adenosine kinase (ADK) and nucleoside diphosphate kinase (NDPK) to regulate extracellular ATP and ADP levels.

It's postulated that fabkin affects beta cells, blunting their effects. The interesting thing is that using antibodies to neutralize fabkin improves beta cell function in both type 2 and type 1 diabetes. In fact, it has been suggested that neutralizing fabkin could "spell the end of diabetes."

This is an exaggeration, although of course anything is possible. A lot more research needs to be done before fabkin wipes out diabetes.

But it's another factor to keep an eye on.