Not just from diabetes

Insulin may protect against bowel cancer

Kirill Stasevich, Science and Life (nkj.ru )

Overweight is often accompanied by oncological diseases, and the link here is usually called inflammation: obesity provokes a sluggish inflammatory reaction, because of it, damage occurs in the cellular DNA, and as a result, a malignant tumor begins to grow in healthy tissue.

But how does the inflammation itself begin? There may be different mechanisms here. On the one hand, fat cells that have accumulated a lot of fat can irritate the immune system by themselves. If we are talking about colon or rectal cancer, then bacteria can play a significant role here. Normally, they are not able not only to penetrate the intestinal wall, but even to approach it – they are not allowed by the layer of the mucous membrane. However, with obesity, microbes pass through the intestinal epithelium and collide with the immune defense of the intestine. Inflammation begins, which cannot be stopped so easily – after all, excess weight does not disappear quickly – bacteria continue to penetrate into the intestine, inflammation continues, and often everything ends with cancer of the colon or rectum.

Researchers from the Institute of Metabolism Max Planck Societies write in Nature Metabolism that insulin can help in such a situation. To prevent epithelial cells from passing bacteria into the intestinal tissue, they must be firmly connected to each other. Such intercellular contacts are made of a number of proteins, and in order for these proteins to exist, the corresponding genes must work. It turns out that the genes that provide intercellular contacts are turned on by the action of insulin. That is, in the case of intestinal epithelial cells, insulin simultaneously encourages them to absorb glucose and synthesize proteins that will form a connection between the cells.

The thing is that obesity, as you know, is also fraught with a decrease in the sensitivity of tissues to insulin (the reason for this, again, is inflammation). In general, it threatens diabetes, and there are a number of medications aimed precisely at restoring the ability of the body's cells to feel insulin. In the case of intestinal epithelial cells, a decrease in insulin sensitivity also threatens bacterial invasion into the intestinal tissue, so their ability to respond to insulin should be returned as early as possible.

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