Nature medicine: cryotherapy for diabetes has seen dawn

July 15, 2015 - In 2009, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article on the discovery of brown adipose tissue in adults, which caused great concern about freezing-induced adaptive heat production. Since freeze-induced adaptive heat production can not only promote energy consumption, but also release energy in the form of heat, it can also promote the oxidation of brown adipose tissue with triglyceride and glucose as a substrate, thus activating human brown adipose tissue to become type II. An important potential treatment for diabetes.

Recently, researchers from the Netherlands published a new study in the international academic journal nature medicine. They used chronic freezing stimulation to treat patients with type 2 diabetes and found that their peripheral insulin sensitivity increased by 43%. This indicates that the use of cold stimulation to treat diabetes has a good application prospect.

Previous studies have shown that chronic freezing stimulation leads to an increase in the amount and activity of human brown adipose tissue, suggesting that brown tissue can be induced by freezing stimulation. Therefore, in this study, the researchers treated 10 patients with type 2 diabetes for 10 days of cold stimulation (14-15 °C) to see if they induced BAT production and improved blood glucose balance. The results showed that after the frozen stimulation, the patient's body weight and clinical blood parameters did not change significantly, the TSH concentration decreased, and the T4 concentration increased. The researchers used the PET-CT method to detect the brown fat activity in the patient's body. It was found that after the cold stimulation treatment, all patients had increased activity in the brown fat area on the clavicle. In addition, the freezing stimulation would be Increased glucose uptake by brown adipose tissue on the clavicle, but brown fat activity in patients with type 2 diabetes is still very low compared to healthy people.

To investigate the effects of cold stimulation on insulin sensitivity in patients with type 2 diabetes, the researchers used a high insulin-normal blood glucose clamp test to test insulin sensitivity in patients before and after freezing, and found that insulin sensitivity increased after cold stimulation. 43%, the GLUT4 translocation in the patient's skeletal muscle increased significantly, but the insulin signaling pathway was not affected, AMPK did not activate, only the brown adipose tissue increased glucose uptake.

In summary, this study used frozen stimulation to treat patients with type 2 diabetes, and tested its brown adipose tissue activity and blood glucose balance, and found that cold stimulation can increase insulin sensitivity and improve blood sugar balance. This study has important reference value for the application of freeze-induced adaptive heat therapy for diabetes.