(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- We may finally know why five-percent of women develop diabetes while they are pregnant.

New research from the Stanford University School of Medicine shows a protein in the pancreas may cause gestational diabetes. The condition can lead to birth defects and predispose children to develop diabetes later in life.

The protein – called menin – is already known to help prevent cancer in the pancreas and other organs. When researchers looked at menin in mice, they found the pancreas produces less of it during pregnancy which causes the islet cells to divide and provide more insulin. Islets are cells of the hormone-producing part of the pancreas. They need to grow in pregnant women or when people gain weight to provide enough insulin for the increasing supply of cells.
 

The study shows within a week after the mice gave birth, their menin levels were back to normal and the pancreatic islets started shrinking to their original size.

When researchers created mice that produce too much menin the islets couldn’t grow enough during pregnancy and the mice developed gestational diabetes.

“This suggests that there is an internal code for controlling pancreatic islet growth, a code we intend to crack,” senior author Seung Kim, M.D., Ph.D., Stanford University School of Medicine, was quoted as saying. It appears the code is partly regulated by the level of menin.

Researchers say understanding how to regulate menin should lead to new ways of growing islets to transplant into patients with type-1 diabetes. It could also lead to new ways to treat gestational diabetes and diabetes in obese adults.

SOURCE: Science, 2007;