Nour Jafar
Mrs. Michele Elsen
Science Biology 10
January 6th, 2010
Genetic Engineering and Diabetes Mellitus
Diabetes Mellitus is a disease that affects a person's ability to use sugar, or glucose, as energy. It also creates difficult for the body to effectively store the glucose for later energy use. Glucose "circulates in the blood to the body's cells, where is serves as one of the chief sources of energy. Diabetes disrupts the body's mechanisms for moving glucose out of the bloodstream and into the cells" ("Diabetes"). There are two common types of diabetes. Type one diabetes, which is also called insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM), and type two diabetes, which is also called non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM). Type one diabetes, or IDDM, affects the "beta cells of the pancreas" and it causes them not to produce enough insulin (Silverstein 5). Type two diabetes, or NIDDM, the pancreas produces insulin, but it turns out to be obsolete insulin (Silverstein 6).
The discovery of Diabetes took place a century ago, by German doctors, and was later established by two Canadian scientists. In 1922, the disease diabetes was established under the research constructed by German doctors a century ago ("An Accidental Discovery Led to the Nobel Prize for Canadian Researchers"). Although the discovery was not until a century ago, and finalized around 90 years ago, diabetes has been around for a very long time. In the book Classic Descriptions of Disease, which was edited by Ralph Major, it mentions that diabetes has been suspected to be around since the Egyptians in 1500 BC (Cohen, par 1). Dr. Cohen mentioned "It was not until the 1600's however that we have a description that in diabetes, the urine was sweet "as if imbued with sugar or honey"," which was taken from Dr. Matthew Dobson's research, which was executed in 1776, in England. The German doctors, mentioned earlier, were Doctors J.V. Mering and Oskar Minkowski. The doctors discovered that diabetes is caused by something triggered in the pancreas. They figured this out from their experimentations on dogs, by removing their pancreases. Finally, in 1922, the two Canadian scientists Fredrick G. Banting and Charles H. Best discovered that a protein, called insulin, could help in the process of controlling diabetes and finalizing the discovery (Cohen, par. 1).
Every mutation happens for a reason and on a specific gene, and diabetes is no different. In diabetes type 1, "a study conducted by Hakon Hakonarsen, Constantin Polychronakos and colleagues at McGill University, Montreal and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Funding was by the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Ontario Genomics Institute, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation" helping find the gene mutation in diabetes type 1 ("Genetic Link to Diabetes Found"). The chromosome that the mutation is located on is chromosome 16. Chromosome 16 has a gene that had mutated that resulted in diabetes. Scientists still do not ...
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Every mutation happens for a reason and on a specific gene, and diabetes is no different. In diabetes type 1, "a study conducted by Hakon Hakonarsen, Constantin Polychronakos and colleagues at McGill University, Montreal and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Funding was by the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Ontario Genomics Institute, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation" helping find the gene mutation in diabetes type 1 ("Genetic Link to Diabetes Found"). The chromosome that the mutation is located on is chromosome 16. Chromosome 16 has a gene that had mutated that resulted in diabetes. Scientists still do not know what happened exactly to the gene that it went under mutation. The gene that mutated is gene KIAA0350, which is located on the short arm on Chromosome 16 ("Genetic Link to Diabetes Found"). The mutation of KIAA0350 "increased the risk of getting type 1 diabetes", yet there are at least 4 other genes that affect the risk of being diagnosed with diabetes ("Genetic Link to Diabetes Found").
Like all other diseases, diabetes has symptoms to help diagnose it. Often times, type one diabetes destroys insulin in the body for months, or even years without symptoms being conveyed. One of the symptoms of diabetes is hyperglycemia. Hyperglycemia is a sudden rise in blood sugar levels, thus resulting in the body no longer producing insulin. With high levels of sugar running through a diabetic's blood, the next symptom appears. Another symptom of diabetes is frequent urination and extreme thirst. These two symptoms appear due to the fact that the rise of sugar in urine causes excessive water loss in kidneys ("Diabetes"). Sometimes, weight loss takes place due to the sugar intake not being absorbed into needed calories, thus burning the calories that were successfully stored from before. "When cells cannot use glucose, they begin to break down stored fat for energy. Breakdown of fat produces chemicals called ketones", if there is an excessive amount of ketones in the body, it could lead to a condition called ketoacidosis ("Diabetes"). The symptoms of this condition can worsen diabetes. The symptoms are nausea, vomiting, and loss of consciousness, which in some cases can be fatal ("Diabetes"). Some other symptoms that a diabetic could face are irritability, fatigue, frequent infections, blurred vision, slow healing, numbness or a tingling sensation. If diabetes goes untreated and becomes out of control, it could cause retinopathy and blindness, as well as kidney disease, and heart disease (Silverstein 6).
Diabetes' history of treatments dates back to as far as 1500 BC, and has advanced ever since. The first form of a treatment was in Egypt, around 1500 BC. "The Egyptian physicians suggested treatments for polyuria (frequent urination-one of the most obvious signs of diabetes) that included eating wheat grains, grapes, honey, and berries" (Silverstein 10). While in 1500 BC, the Egyptians recommended a diet of wheat grains, grapes, honey, and berries, in 100 AD, the Greeks recommended an updated diet of milk, gruel, cereal and wine (Silverstein 11). Further advancing in treatments for diabetes, technology was also advancing. English physician, Dr. Matthew Dobson proved the chemical sweetness of the urine was due to the presence of sugar. To figure out where the sugar was coming from, he ran blood tests from both diabetics and healthy people, which suggested that the sugar came from the blood. Up until the early nineteenth century, doctors had to taste a patient's urine to see if it contained sweetness to it, linking it back to diabetes. German physician Johann Frank invented a yeast test for sugar, and did away with urine sampling for good. Around the same time period, British physician John Rollo was experimenting with different diets as a treatment to diabetes. He recommended that maintaining a low carbohydrate diet, high fat intake, green vegetables and exercising regularly was one way to help treat diabetes (Silverstein 12). The actual treatment we use today is called insulin. Insulin was first used in 1921 at Toronto General Hospital to treat fourteen year old Leonard Thompson. "His diabetes had been diagnosed two years before and doctors had used the only treatment they knew of - a starvation diet of 450 calories a day. The boy was still alive, but just barely; he weighed only seventy-five pounds" (Silverstein 16). The benefits of insulin helped many people with type 1 diabetes. It helped lower their blood sugar level dramatically, allowing them to eat a healthier diet and reach a healthier weight than before. Some limitations using this treatment are it is useless towards patients who suffer from type two diabetes, since they produce insulin already, but it is ineffective. Other limitations include people are unwilling to inject themselves daily, trypanophobia; which is a fear of injections; are either too old, feeble or blind. The amount of insulin injected into the body, or the dose, is also hard to control, it can be either a little too much or too little. Another treatment was created for those who could not use the insulin to treat diabetes. The treatment Sulfonylureas was actually accidental. The drug was created in order to help treat typhoid fever, but instead lowered blood sugar levels. A couple of side effects to this drug include it causes hypoglycemia; which would need a patient to take the lowest dose possible for this not to happen, an upset stomach, weight gain, and headaches (Silverstein 20). One last treatment for controlling diabetes is insulin in the form of a nasal spray. It is quick and efficient, but doctors do not recommend this as a long term treatment, for the membranes in the nasal passage are extremely delicate, and could be damaged by the spray if used for a long period of time (Silverstein 98). For following up with treatments, diabetics must check their blood sugar frequently. The frequency of the checkups can be a downside since people with type 1 diabetes need to checkup more often during the day than a type 2 diabetic. A limitation to checking the blood sugar is that the level of sugar can drop easily and rise extremely quickly, making the need to check on blood sugar more frequent (Silverstein 31). The process of checking on blood sugar is by pricking a finger and placing it Source: New York Times
on the sensor pad, and after a moment, the results show up on the screen, indicating if it is high or low.
There are many social aspects that affect diabetics. One cultural aspect is that certain people groups are more likely to inherit the disease than others. Specifically, people are more likely to inherit diabetes type two than type one. People groups that are more likely to be diagnosed with this disease are African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders ("Type 2", par. 1). Another social aspect that affects people who have diabetes is the social aspect. In today's modern society, people are spending less time at home, and increasing their time outside. Most of the time when the term outside is used, it incorporates nature, but not in this case. Most people go to shopping complexes, movie cinemas, or something similar. This decreases the likelihood of someone having a proper meal that is healthy and made with extreme attention to hygiene. When out, a vast majority of people eat at fast food restaurants. Habits of today's population include laziness, lack of exercise, either an undernourished diet (relating to anorexia), or a meal full of empty calories. If this trend continues long enough, said patient will become obese, and increases their chances of being diabetic. Last aspect that diabetes is affected by is environmental. The environmental aspect in diabetes comes from the insulin treatments. Before synthetic insulin came into use in 1955, insulin was taken from cattle. The problem that arose from this is that the livestock began to decrease rapidly, while the diabetics were increasing rapidly as well. This caused biochemist Fredrick Sanger to create insulin synthetically. It took around 10 years to complete his research, perfecting all 51 amino acids found in the hormone insulin (Silverstein 20).
Works Cited
Cohen, Robert M. "Ask an Expert: Who discovered diabetes?" NetWellness Homepage. University of Cincinnati, 19 Apr. 2004. Web. 04 Jan. 2010.
<http://www.netwellness.org/question.cfm/29588.htm>.
"Diabetes." The World Book. 2004. Print.
"The discovery of diabetes." Owl Editing. Web. 02 Jan. 2010. <http://owled.com/diabetes.html>.
"Genetic link to diabetes found." NHS Choices Homepage - Your health, your choices. DirectGov, 17
July 2007. Web. 04 Jan. 2010. <http://www.nhs.uk/news/2007/July/Pages/Geneticlinktodiabetesfound.aspx>.
The New York Times. The New York Times, 01 Aug. 2007. Web. 5 Jan. 2010. <http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/01/health/adam/17152.jpg>.
Silverstein, Alvin, Robert Silverstein, and Virginia Silverstein. Diabetes. Hillside, NJ, U.S.A: Enslow, 1994. Print.
"Type 2 - American Diabetes Association." American Diabetes Association Home Page - American Diabetes Association. American Diabetes Association. Web. 05 Jan. 2010. <http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/type-2/>.
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