Fat-Cell Protein May Reduce Diabetes Risk
Almost 24 million Americans have diabetes, and about 6 million of them don't yet know it, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Untreated, the disease can lead to serious complications, including kidney failure, amputations and blindness.
What this study doesn't mean, however, is that you should add fat to increase your adiponectin levels. Fat tissue also produces other signaling molecules, according to van Dam, and most of these are destructive, not helpful. Additionally, although adiponectin is produced by fat tissue, the heavier you get, the less adiponectin you're likely to produce.
For the current study, he and his colleagues reviewed 13 studies in a meta-analysis. In all, they included almost 15,000 participants and 2,623 people who were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
All of the studies found a reduced relative risk of type 2 diabetes with higher levels of adiponectin. The average risk reduction was 28 percent for each incremental increase in adiponectin.
The researchers adjusted the data for body mass index and for lifestyle factors and found that the results were consistent across different ethnic groups, according to van Dam.
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