Diabetes and staph bacteria

I have a tendency to want to share random, sometimes useless, information that is generally not interesting to the general population but it is to me. This had lead to various jokes in my family from where I have tried to explain things by saying "if you think about it" and usually ends with a " The more you know!" text from my brother. So in saying that it shouldn't be surprising that I do this at work too. I constantly want to share interesting scientific information with the patients that come through my line.

Well we've been running a promotion for the American Diabetes foundation and one woman donated and expressed her wish from them to find a cure soon. I couldn't help but start talking about this article I recently read about how type 2 diabetes may be linked to an over colonization of Staphylococcus bacteria. Basically we know that there is an increased chance of developing Type 2 with high weight gain. What researchers in Iowa have found that this increased weight also increases the colonization of Staph on the skin which then increases the bodies superantigen response system. Where the link to diabetes comes from is that over production and constant production of the staph superantigen can cause systemic inflammation that then reduces insulin sensitivity.

The same group of researchers are doing further studies on this to try to create a vaccine that will reduce the chances of developing diabetes and also to create a gel that can be applied topically to kill the staph colonies. As more research is done on this it will be interesting to see if these two things are possible.

Here's the link for anyone to read: http://now.uiowa.edu/2015/06/bacteria-may-cause-type-2-diabetes