Having discovered a dramatic increase of an easy-to-detect enzyme in the red blood cells of people with diabetes and prediabetes, Johns Hopkins scientists say the discovery could lead to a simple, routine test for detecting the subtle onset of the disease, before symptoms or complications occur and in time to reverse its course.
Pilot studies, published online April 22 in Diabetes, show the enzyme O-GlcNAcase is up to two to three times higher in people with diabetes and prediabetes than in those with no disease: “That’s a big difference, especially in an enzyme that’s as tightly regulated as this one is,” says Gerald Hart, Ph.D., the DeLamar Professor and director of biological chemistry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
Building on their previous research, which showed how an abundant but difficult-to-detect sugar switch known as O-GlcNAc (pronounced oh-GLICK-nack) responded to nutrients and stress, the Hopkins team knew this small molecule was elevated in the red cells of patients with diabetes. “The question was whether the elevation happened in the earliest stages of diabetes and therefore might have value as a diagnostic tool,” Hart said.
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