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| Credit: www.asianscientist.com |
Binge drinking causes insulin resistance, which increases
the risk of Type 2 diabetes, according to the results of an animal study led by
researchers at the Diabetes Obesity and Metabolism Institute at the Icahn
School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
The authors further discovered that alcohol disrupts
insulin-receptor signaling by causing inflammation in the hypothalamus area of
the brain.
"Insulin resistance has emerged as a key metabolic
defect leading to Type 2 diabetes and coronary artery disease (CAD)," said
Christoph Buettner, MD, PhD, senior author of the study and Associate Professor
of Medicine (Endocrinology, Diabetes and Bone Disease). "Someone who
regularly binge drinks even once a week, over many years, may remain in an
insulin resistant state for an extended period of time, potentially
years," said Dr. Buettner.
In this study, researchers treated rats with alcohol for
three consecutive days to simulate human binge drinking. A control group
received the same amount of calories. Once alcohol was no longer detectable in
blood, glucose metabolism was studied through either glucose-tolerance tests or
through controlled-insulin infusions. The rats treated with alcohol were found
to have higher concentrations of plasma insulin than the control group,
suggesting that insulin resistance may have been the cause of the impaired
glucose tolerance.
High plasma insulin
levels are a major component of the metabolic syndrome, a group of risk factors
that occur together and increase the risk for Type 2 diabetes, coronary artery
disease, and stroke.
"Previously it was unclear whether binge drinking was
associated with an increased risk for diabetes, since a person who binge drinks
may also tend to binge eat, or at least eat too much. Our data show for the
first time that binge drinking induces insulin resistance directly and can
occur independent of differences in caloric intake," said Claudia Lindtner,
MD, first author of the study and an Associate Researcher of Medicine,
Endocrinology, Diabetes and Bone Disease at the Icahn School of Medicine.
###
The above story is based on the
Janaury 30, 2013 news release by Mount Sinai Medical Center.
The results are published in the journal Science
Translational Medicine:
Lindtner C, Scherer T, Zielinski E, Filatova N, Fasshauer M,
Tonks NK, Puchowicz M, Buettner C. Binge Drinking Induces Whole-Body Insulin
Resistance by Impairing Hypothalamic Insulin Action. Sci Transl Med 2013; 5
(170): 170ra14 DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3005123
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