Type 2 diabetes makes life a challenge for 16 million Americans. The debilitating disease, it turns out, is also found in bottlenose dolphins.
But while diabetes in humans often leads to nerve damage, kidney failure, blindness and death (among other things), dolphins appear to be relatively unscathed by the malady.
Why?
Researchers have discovered that the dolphins have a sort of "switch" that allows them to turn the disease on and off.
Diabetics lack or are resistant to the hormone insulin, which helps break down the glucose that powers our brains. Scientists think that dolphin brains are also powered by glucose. So why the diabetes "switch?" National Geographic explains:
Dolphins, however, primarily eat fish, which are high in protein and low in sugar. To get enough glucose from this diet, dolphins have evolved a mostly harmless form of insulin resistance, according to Stephanie Venn-Watson, director of clinical research for the U.S. nonprofit National Marine Mammal Foundation.
Not all researchers agree that dolphins use blood sugar in the same way that humans do. But that won't stop scientists from studying the diabetes "switch" in the hopes of developing a treatment for humans.
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