Ultrasound may Help Treat Diabetes

Possibility of treating type 2 diabetes without drugs can be now feasible by using ultrasound as per a study led by GE Research, including investigators from the Yale School of Medicine, UCLA, and the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.

Ultrasound For Diabetes

The study shows that targeting specific clusters of nerves in the liver through short bursts of unique non-invasive ultrasound, through a technology called peripheral focused ultrasound stimulation (pFUS) can potentially reduce the levels of insulin and glucose.

The technology thereby helped reverse the onset of hyperglycemia and was found to be effective in three separate animal models of diabetes: mice, rats, and pigs.

“We used this technique to explore stimulation of an area of the liver called the porta hepatis. This region contains the hepatoportal nerve plexus, which communicates information on glucose and nutrient status to the brain but has been difficult to study as its nerve structures are too small to separately stimulate with implanted electrodes,” say the researchers in a Nature briefing.

“Unfortunately, there are currently only very few drugs that lower insulin levels. If our ongoing clinical trials confirm the promise of the preclinical studies reported in this paper, and ultrasound can be used to lower both insulin and glucose levels, ultrasound neuromodulation would represent an exciting and entirely new addition to the current treatment options for our patients,” says Raimund Herzog, a Yale School of Medicine endocrinologist working on the project.

Source-Medindia