Researchers Reveal How Vitamin K May Help Prevent Diabetes: Study
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Canadian researchers have identified how vitamin K helps prevent diabetes, a finding that could lead to new therapeutic applications for a disease that affects one in 11 people worldwide and has no cure. Several studies have previously suggested a link between a reduced intake of vitamin K and an increased risk of diabetes. However, the biological mechanisms by which vitamin K protects against diabetes remained a mystery until now.
The team from the Universite de Montreal (UdeM) found a potentially protective role of vitamin K and gamma-carboxylation in beta cells. Vitamin K is a micronutrient known for its role in blood clotting, in particular in gamma-carboxylation -- an enzymatic reaction essential to the process. The study, published in the journal Cell Reports, determined that the enzymes involved in gamma-carboxylation and therefore in the use of vitamin K were present in large quantities in pancreatic beta cells, the very cells that produce the precious insulin