Scientists find unsuspected molecular link between obesity and insulin resistance

A new understanding of insulin resistance and the action of diabetes drugs such as Avandia and Actos could pave the way for improved medications that are more selective and safer, say scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and The Scripps Research Institute.

Our findings strongly suggest that good and bad effects of these drugs can be separated by designing second-generation drugs that focus on the newly uncovered mechanism, said Bruce Spiegelman, PhD, of Dana-Farber, senior author on a report appearing in the July 22 issue of Nature.

Avandia and Actos, known generically as rosiglitazone and pioglitazone, are widely used to counteract the obesity-related abnormalities in insulin response that lead to diabetes. The drugs act on a master regulatory protein called PPAR-gamma, primarily in fat cells, which governs genes involved in the bodys response to insulin.

Obesity resulting from a high-fat diet alters the function of PPAR-gamma and disrupts the expression of those insulin response genes, including adipsin and adiponectin. Avandia and Actos work by binding to PPAR-gamma and reversing the gene expression changes.

The drugs were believed to work by stimulating or agonizing the PPAR-gamma receptor, causing it to rev up some genes and dampen the activity of others.

In the Nature report, however, the researchers say they have identified an entirely new and surprising mechanism by which PPAR-gamma can control whole-body insulin sensitivity. It is mainly through this mechanism, they found, that the diabetes drugs counteract insulin resistance – not their agonist effect on PPAR-gamma. Moreover, they say, agonism of PPAR-gamma may be largely responsible for the harmful drug side effects.

The newly identified pathway linking obesity and insulin response involves cdk5, a protein kinase, or molecular switch. When cdk5 is activated by the development of obesity in mice, it causes a chemical change in PPAR-gamma called phosphorylation. In contrast to agonism of PPAR-gamma, phosphorylation has a narrow effect, disrupting a smaller set of genes that lead to insulin resistance...