Article in Press: Diabetes Mellitus, Tuberculosis and the Mycobacteria: Two Millenia of Enigma, by Lawrence Broxmeyer MD
According to an in press, peer-reviewed Elsevier article by researcher Lawrence Broxmeyer MD, although the thought that tuberculosis and its related mycobacteria could cause diabetes seems farfetched, it no longer is.
(PRWEB) July 5, 2005 -- According to an in press, peer-reviewed Elsevier
article by researcher Lawrence Broxmeyer MD, although the thought that
tuberculosis and its related mycobacteria could cause diabetes seems farfetched,
it no longer is.
The peculiar relationship and frequent association of
diabetes mellitus and tuberculosis has been observed for more than 2000 years,
yet the reason for this correlation is, to this day, not known. “Before the
discovery of insulin, a diagnosis of diabetes was a death sentence within 5
years,” said Lawrence Broxmeyer MD, “and the usual cause of that death was
tuberculosis. Despite this, in the 5th century, tuberculosis was already being
portrayed as a ‘complication’ of diabetes, a view little changed to this day,
parroting Root’s original 1934 description of ‘a one-sided relationship’:
tuberculosis still seen as a common complication of diabetes, while diabetes was
thought to be no more common among TB patients than in the population at large.
To Nichol’s, this was ‘not logically tenable’ and in his study of 178 otherwise
healthy, non-diabetic military men with tuberculosis at Fitzsimmons Army
Hospital, one-third had abnormal glucose screening tests. But despite his
findings and those of Reaud in New York and others, this was not being
recognized elsewhere, and Nichols wanted to know why.”
“Nichols
concluded”, mentioned Lawrence Broxmeyer MD, "that the incidence of diabetes
among tuberculosis patients was considerably underestimated and that in
tuberculosis patients, diabetes develops quite commonly. Diabetes, he felt, was
easy to detect. Tuberculosis and the mycobacteria were not.”
“The
evidence for a mycobacterial cause of diabetes is mounting rapidly,” said
Lawrence Broxmeyer MD. “Schwartz and Haas both linked Type-2 diabetes to forms
of tuberculosis. And the pancreatic islet amyloid deposits that they found as a
by-product of systemic tubercular infection have recently been dissolved by
rifampicin, a first line drug against tuberculosis. Engelbach spoke of
‘transitory’ diabetes in TB and Karachunskii noted changes in carbohydrate
metabolism in patients with tuberculosis which commonly led to insulin
deficiency with persistent hyperglycemia.”
“More importantly,” Lawrence
Broxmeyer MD continued, “mycobacteria elements have been shown recently not only
to cause ‘autoimmune’ Type-1 diabetes in NOD (non-obese diabetic) mice, but act
as a vaccine to stop the inevitable diabetes that would otherwise materialize.
The documentation of patient cases where TB has preceded and come before the
development of diabetes is extensive yet underplayed and both Lin’s and Tsai’s
studies speak of tuberculosis complicated by diabetes.”
“By 1991,”
Lawrence Broxmeyer MD continued, “2 years before The World Health Organization
belatedly issued its first ever global emergency regarding tuberculosis, a
disease which is estimated to result in a human death every 10 seconds, a WHO ad
hoc committee announced that an apparent epidemic of diabetes had occurred – or
was occurring – in adult people throughout the world. The developing countries,
as well as the minorities of disadvantaged communities in industrialized
nations, particularly in the United States, seemed to be taking the brunt of it.
CDC maps for US Diabetes and TB, show, in each case, a predominantly southern US
distribution for both diseases, with major inroads along much of the eastern
seaboard.”
“Coincidentally”, reminded Lawrence Broxmeyer MD, “the
American Indians have some of the highest diabetes rates in the world, nearly
four times greater than other Americans, with 40–70% of American Indian adults
aged 45–74 found to have diabetes in a recent screening study in three
geographic areas. But it is within this subgroup, that the highest levels of
diabetes in the world are found, in the Pima Indians of
Arizona.”
“Diabetes, however,” said Lawrence Broxmeyer MD, was and is not
the only problem facing the American Indians and the Pimas. For if Indian
diabetes soared, their rate of TB was more than five times greater than that for
other Americans, most of their children becoming tuberculin positive by the age
of 10 or 15. By 1900, tuberculosis had become the most serious health problem
among North American Indians, as well as their leading cause of infectious
death. And some of the most dreadful manifestations of tuberculosis
susceptibility on record can be found when this group was compelled to change
their ancestral ways and live on reservations.”
“Runaway epidemics among
North American Indians” Lawrence Broxmeyer MD reminded, “such as in Arizona,
left in their wake TB mortality rates of up to 9,000 per 100,000, the highest
anywhere at anytime, a by product of their confinement to reservations and
adopting the white man’s diet and way of life. Susceptible American Indians were
in the direct path of their European colonizers. The single worst disease
present in European cities was tuberculosis and by 1800 it was understood that
no other disease was as common, nor as deadly.”
“Diabetes has been
around since the first century AD,” Lawrence Broxmeyer MD concluded, “in a
perpetual state of coping and managing. It is time, it is long past time, to
cure diabetes. But current models as to its cause are not equipping us to do
so.”
Downloading this and other cutting edge Medline articles by Lawrence
Broxmeyer MD, as well as his on-going research, can be found by going to http://medamericaresearch.org.
Distribution: Med
America Research, Lawrence Broxmeyer, Lawrence Broxmeyer MD, Dr. Lawrence
Broxmeyer
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/7/prweb257894.htm