'Feel-good' hormone serotonin regulates blood sugar concentration
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - 14:35
in Health & Medicine
(PhysOrg.com) -- Diabetes is the most prevalent metabolic disease in developed countries and one that engenders - in addition to its high fatality - enormous health care costs. The physiological meaning of the ‘feel-good` hormone serotonin in insulin-producing cells of the pancreas was not understood for more than 40 years but has finally been resolved by scientists of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Genetics in Berlin. The researchers Diego J. Walther, Nils Paulmann and colleagues report in the current issue of PloS Biology, that a lack of serotonin in the pancreas causes diabetes.
