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Genetic and Lifestyle Factors in Diabetes: Unraveling the Connection
Unraveling the Glucose Absorption Puzzle
How much is a diabetes diagnosis subject to genetics, and how much is it on account of lifestyle? In order to figure this out, it has to be established how much of it truly is genetic. This is also efficient because people’s lifestyles are difficult to monitor in comparison to their genetics. Diabetes is a genetically passed down condition that becomes apparent in different stages of a carrier’s life depending on the variation or type. It is a very serious condition, and without knowing its genetic properties, it may be harder for an individual to assess their probability of having it. Diabetes, when studied as a genetic condition, therefore, is much more informative than an alternative.
Diabetes is a hereditary condition, which can be implied by its strong dependence on varying genetics. Diabetes is essentially a condition that turns the human body’s blood into a built-up central for sugars that have entered the body. See, how a normal body takes in energy is fairly straightforward. When someone consumes a food source with glucose in it, which is just about everything, it is dissolved and digested. During the digestion process, the pancreas sends the glucose and insulin outward into the body through the bloodstream. Cells in the body are signaled to open their membrane and allow glucose to be absorbed by the insulin in the blood. The insulin flows into receptors on a cell’s membrane that will open up paths for the glucose.
The variations of diabetes, type one or type two, are based on the irregularities in this process. Type one diabetes is when the insulin being produced is either very minute in quantity or not functioning, meaning when it falls into receptor sites, the cell does not recognize it and does not open up its wall. Type two diabetes is when there are no receptors for the insulin being made in particular. Both types essentially result in a lack of absorption of glucose in the body and a build-up in their bloodstream. This is because carbohydrates rely on insulin and have no other way of being processed out of the bloodstream. The result is not only an unhealthy bloodstream but also a malnourished body that will take it out on itself if not treated correctly (Gerstein, 2013).
Exploring Diabetes Inheritance and CTLA-4 Relevance
There are many effects of the condition. The sugary bloodstream will eventually begin to slowly kill proteins in the body, which several organs and even tissues need to function correctly. Other parts of the body, like the cornea of a person’s eye, kidney, heart, or nerves, can be threatened by the body’s complications (Gerstein, 2013).
Type 1 diabetes is the most commonly associated with hereditary passage. Speculations of this stem from the fact that most type one diagnoses begin in children or a young age population group when type two, in comparison, usually shows up after the age of thirty, suggesting more of a lifestyle factor being at hand (Gerstein, 2013).
It is believed that diabetes is largely passed on by an autosomal chromosome 2q33 with a deficient strain of CTLA-4. CTLA-4 is a type of protein receptor that is usually associated with conditions that have dominant autosomal characteristics, but diabetes, on the other hand, is not necessarily dominant or recessive (Nistico, 1996). Type one diabetes is considered almost mysterious because its association with CTLA-4, or 2q33, isn’t quite a consistent phenomenon because type one is polygenic.
This essentially means that there are a variety of genes that can contribute to the conclusive overall condition of diabetes. Having so many genes involved means that it can be recessive, dominant, or a combination (Nistico, 1996) (Nieuwenhuijze, Liston, 2015). CTLA-4 was initially thought to be associated with a type of diabetes because it is one encoder for t-cell receptors, and being that diabetes is an autoimmune disease, t-cells are essential to its effects (Nistico, 1996).
Genetic Factors, Transmission Patterns, and Diversity in Diabetes Diagnosis
Definitive research does not exist to show certain likelihoods as to whether a father or a mother is more genetically responsible. This is difficult to prove, of course, because of the variating recessive and dominant genes that make up a diabetes diagnosis. However, there are more cases of diabetes in young children whose fathers are carriers of the condition, but the exact reasoning is not proven (Osborn, 2013). Transmission may not be realized in the case of type two, being that it is normally dormant until brought to fruition from lifestyle (Gerstein, 2013).
Linkage is one of the concepts developed after Mendel developed his initial basis of genetics. Given that diabetes is an example of linkage, this would make it post-mendelian. Approximately 73% percent of type one diabetes is shown to be subject to allele transferring or sharing of ASP pairs shown in a study with siblings (Risch, 2000).
It is often misunderstood among the populace that someone necessarily must be overweight to be diagnosed with diabetes. Diabetes can be an apparent condition in anyone with a hereditary pool. According to the American Diabetes Association, as of 2015, over 9.4% of the population in the U.S. alone was diagnosed with diabetes of one form or another, and 1.5 million every year. They say that the top four ethnicities that make up the diagnosed population are currently Asian Americans (8%), Hispanics (12.1%), African Americans (12.7%), and the combined group of American Indians as well as Alaskan natives (15.1%). Since diabetes is polygenic, it’s difficult to say exactly what the cause of these concentrations is.
Adaptive Nature of Diabetes Types and Management Challenges
The more adaptive type of diabetes is type two diabetes because it tends to stay dormant until someone develops obesity or a generally unhealthy lifestyle. This means that it tends to arise or be more likely to arise if the body is taking in and storing an overwhelming amount of carbohydrates or glucose, to begin with. Both types can prove the body somewhat adaptive because the side effects are just the body trying to accommodate it. For example, when the body isn’t getting enough from its intake, it begins to feed off of what’s stored in the body, resulting in weight loss (Gerstein, 2013).
Unfortunately, the condition’s unpredictability caused by its polygenetic causes and multi-effect results make it not only difficult to diagnose but incurable as well. However, an individual can combat many of the symptoms by self-injecting insulin shots on a daily basis (Gerstein, 2013).For these reasons, it can be concluded that, yes, diabetes is largely on account of genetics, but in a lot of cases, mainly type two, lifestyle has to be taken into account.
References:
- Gerstein, H. C. (2013). Diabetes: Chronic Complications (3rd ed.). John Wiley & Sons.
- Nistico, L. (1996). CTLA-4 in autoimmune diseases. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 778, 325-332.
- Nieuwenhuijze, A., & Liston, A. (2015). The multifaceted role of the thymus in tolerance. Immunology and Cell Biology, 93(9), 787-793.
- Osborn, C. Y. (2013). Inherited diabetes: Betrayal of the pancreas. Journal of Diabetes & Metabolism, 4(6), 279.
- Risch, N. (2000). Linkage strategies for genetically complex traits: I. Multilocus models. American Journal of Human Genetics, 66(6), 1773-1784.
- American Diabetes Association. (2015). National Diabetes Statistics Report, 2014. Diabetes Care, 38(Supplement 1), S1-S93.
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