The Scientists from the US National Marine Mammal Foundation presented their findings.
“The overnight changes in their blood chemistry match the changes in diabetic humans,”
This means that insulin – the hormone that reduces the glucose level in the blood – has no effect on dolphins when they fast.
The dolphin diet is rich in protein and doesn’t typically include a lot of glucose-laden carbs.
Dolphins have the ability to “turn on” diabetic-like tendencies, thus sustaining higher blood glucose levels during overnight fasting.
The Scientists team took blood samples from trained dolphins that “snack” continuously during the day and fast overnight.
Dr Stephanie Venn-Watson, a veterinary epidemiologist and director of Clinical Research at the National Marine Mammal Foundation in San Diego said, “It is our hope that this discovery can lead to novel ways to prevent, treat and maybe even cure diabetes in humans.”
Venn-Watson and her colleagues take measurement of insulin levels in six dolphins two hours after the animals ate
Dr Stephanie Venn-Watson said “Maybe this is a vestige of something dormant that could be awakened and used as a therapy or cure.” She believes that this research on dolphin’s DNA to work out how they do it could result in therapies in humans to switch on the ability again.
“Dolphins in the ocean go in to feast or famine situations”, she said. “They will eat a bunch of fish at once and then they may go a while and fast and not eat. “During that fasting state they need a mechanism to keep sugar pumping around their blood. “Dolphins can switch off diabetes but people cannot.”
Dr Venn-Watson believes that the ability dates back to when dolphins reverted from land animals to sea animals 55 million years ago and had to adapt to a protein-only fish diet.
“Diabetes now accounts for five per cent of human deaths globally,” said Dr Stephanie Venn-Watson
The research, presented in annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Research suggests that dolphins may be the best model for studying diabetes and offer insights into treating the disease.
Experts predict that aproximate four million Britons could be diabetic by 2025. More than 2.5 million people in Britain suffer from Diabetes, which can be serious complications including blindness.