Insulin Differs Between Ethnicities, Study Finds
Minority Diabetes Reports Thursday, September 19th, 2013Medical news today: 7/1/13
People have differing abilities to release and react to insulin depending on ethnicity, according to a new study from researchers at Lund University in Sweden, Stanford University and Kitasato University.
The results show that healthy subjects of all ethnicities were able to maintain a normal glucose level, but did so in different ways.
“Africans tend to have lower insulin sensitivity. However, they appear to compensate for this by releasing larger quantities of insulin. Among those of East Asian origin, the reverse appears to be the case. They have very good insulin sensitivity, but appear to have a poorer ability to release more insulin if it is needed. Caucasians fall somewhere between the two extremes. Both insulin release and insulin sensitivity are affected”, says Damon Tojjar, a doctoral student at the Lund University Diabetes Centre (LUDC). Read more