Researchers Looking At Hispanics To Find Diabetes Cause
Inside a small motor home, Joanne Pierluissi raised her sleeve as nurse Mary Perez inserted a needle into the vein above her forearm, drawing blood into a tube for a diabetes test. As her daughters watched, Pierluissi, 24, said it was for them, as much as for herself, that she agreed to be tested for the deadly killer of Hispanics. ``I was concerned because they said an aunt of mine had it and I just wanted to come for the checkup. All of our family is going to go through the program to make sure that if we have it that we'll do something about it.'' Twelve million Americans have some form of diabetes, but it is most prevalent among minorities, especially Native Americans, blacks and Hispanics. Hispanics are three times as likely to develop diabetes as the general population, and 40 percent of the 700,000 victims in Texas are Mexican-American. More than 150,000 Americans die from diabetes each year; another 150,000 deaths are diabetes-related, according to the American Diabetes Association. No one really knows what sparks it, but researchers believe Hispanics could hold the key. San Antonio, the nation's ninth largest city, with a population that is 50 percent Hispanic, is becoming the base for diabetes studies. Researchers take a customized mobile home to neighborhoods to randomly check Hispanics and Anglos for the disease, which deprives the body of insulin and can lead to complications affecting the heart, kidneys, eyes and nerves. San Antonio's Hispanic makeup led Dr. Ralph DeFronzo to abandon his prestigious position as a Yale University diabetes researcher and persuade his four-member team to relocate to the University of Texas Health Science Center. An epidemiologist at the center, Dr. Michael Stern, has devoted 10 years to studying Hispanic diabetes and led the grassroots study of Type II diabetes. Type II, the most common form, develops mostly in obese adults over 40 who also may have a family history of the disease. In obese diabetics, the body has too much insulin because it is burning more fats than sugars. Type I diabetes usually develops among adolescents and requires that they have daily injections of insulin. Stern said family studies of diabetic patients are brining him closer to finding the gene that triggers the disease. A genetic marker might identify people who are susceptible, which could lead to a screening test, he said. ``Then you could go out and zero in on the genetic susceptibles and you can be more intense on your recommendations to them and you could also study that group.'' Stern believes if people exercised more and ate less of the fat-saturated foods common to the diets of low-income Hispanics, fewer would get the disease. ``We use the term double jeopardy for Mexican-Americans,'' he said. ``We don't know why, when they get diabetes, they have a more severe form of the disease _ whether it's a biological difference or is it that they are not getting as good medical care. ``But the interesting thing is that upper-income Mexican-Americans do not have the same risk as low-income Mexican-Americans. It may be that the gene is there, but for some reason it may not be expressed in the upper-income Mexican-Americans. ``Also, Mexican-Americans tend to have more body fat in their upper torso and we can see that as related to diabetes.'' Between 1979 and 1988, Stern and his staff studied more than 5,000 people and found that 387 of 2,905 Hispanics had the disease, or 13.3 percent, compared to only 87 of 1,780 Anglos, or 4.8 percent. Researchers believe that poor Hispanics' diets of cheap, processed foods, lack of exercise and infrequent medical attention _ either due to poverty or a cultural bias against doctors _ increases their risk of acquiring diabetes. The study is in its follow-up stage, to see if diagnosed diabetes patients have changed their lifestyle and have sought medical care. Teresa Castro, 54, whose diabetic husband died at age 37, went through the screening eight years ago. She was told that because of her weight, 254 pounds, she had hypertension and was at risk of diabetes. Doctors put her on a strict, low-fat diet and she lost 26 pounds. ``I went to the screening because they called and said it was free. That's why I went to it, because being poor I couldn't afford to go to the doctor for this type of checkup,'' she said. ``My mother has diabetes and they tell me I might have diabetes, too, but I don't know too much about it. ``I feel OK, but they tell me that one year you can be OK and the next year, it can be totally different.'' DeFronzo, who in 1988 was chosen the top diabetes investigator by Canadian and Japanese diabetes associations, says his unit at the Health Science Center will try to use many of Stern's patients for research. That will include work for Lipha Chemicals, which makes an anti-diabetic drug called metaforim that improves the body's ability to respond to insulin. ``The problem with Type II diabetics is not that they don't make enough insulin; they don't respond to the insulin,'' DeFronzo said. ``What we'd like to do is make them more responsive and this drug will do that.'' The drug is widely used in Europe, Canada and Mexico and should be approved by the Food and Drug Administration in several years for U.S. use, he said. Educating elementary-school-age children about healthy diets would help reduce the number of diabetes cases, DeFronzo said. ``If you have a 65-year-old mother who weighs 220 pounds and you tell her to go out and jog five miles Monday, Wednesday and Friday, she is going to laugh at you. ``So you have to design an exercise program that is compatible with the patient's lifestyle and it is something they can do.''
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