One of the nasty tricks that diabetes has up its sleeve is the ability to carry on harming people long after they have got the level of glucose in their blood under control. Now researchers think they may be able to stop this, using cheap available drugs.
The idea builds on the discovery that when cells are exposed to the high levels of glucose typical of diabetes, proteins within the cells’ mitochondria suffer damaging changes. The proteins become permanently attached to sugar-like molecules called glycans, and this not only prevents them doing their job properly but also makes them produce…
