Electromagnetic fields treat type 2 diabetes in mice

Electromagnetic fields treat type 2 diabetes in mice

Tibi Puiu

Calvin Carter, a postdoc at the University of Iowa, was working with mice for a totally unrelated study of the effects of electromagnetic fields (EMF) on the brain and behavior of animals. His colleague Sunny Huang asked Carter to borrow some mice for his Ph.D. project, which required him to practice drawing blood and measuring blood sugar levels.

The mice that Carter used in his experiments all had type 2 diabetes, so they should have high blood sugar. But Huang was shocked to find the mice had normal blood sugar levels.

These findings are quite fantastic, but can they be translated to humans? After all, animal studies are often poor predictors of responses in humans. However, experiments performed on human liver cells that were treated with EMFs for six hours also showed that a surrogate marker for insulin sensitivity improved drastically. This lends some hope that it may be indeed possible to translate this therapy to humans.

According to the World Health Organization, low-energy EMFs are considered safe for human health, and Carter and colleagues found no evidence of any adverse effects in the mice used in the study. Nevertheless, the researchers plan to repeat these experiments on pigs, whose hearts and cardiovascular system more closely resemble those of humans. If all goes well, they plan to commence clinical trials that may show that magnetic fields can treat type 2 diabetes in humans.

Electromagnetic fields treat type 2 diabetes in mice

Tibi Puiu

The researcher apparently found at least part of the mechanism of action:  "...experiments suggest that EMFs alter the signaling of superoxide molecules, prolonging the activation of an antioxidant response and rebalancing the response to insulin."

I suspect that this will stimulate a lot of work in pharmaceutical companies to come up with some way of mimicking this mechanism by a drug. Which of course will have side effects, unlike the EMF method used by the researcher. But that's where the money is. There will be much less interest in commercializing the electromagnetic method, which would be much less profitable than a drug. Product development and testing costs money and has to be spent expecting a commensurate financial reward.