Center to aid diabetes research

$6.6M program to be part of LSI

By Shabnam Daneshvar

Daily Staff Reporter

While many University students may think of themselves as free and far from diabetes - one of the most common causes of death in the nation - University officials and doctors around the nation are urging students to think again.

"You need to get checked if you have the common symptoms," said internal medicine Prof. Douglas Greene, director of the University's Michigan Diabetes Research and Training Center.

"Students ... after the age of puberty need to know they can go to the health services and check themselves" from the chronic and genetically determined disease that afflicts more than 16 million people nationwide and claims the life of one person in the United States every three minutes, Greene said.

To further the understanding of diabetes and the search for a cure, yesterday the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, the world's leading nonprofit funder of diabetes research, announced the establishment of a new $6.6 million Center for the Study of Complications in Diabetes at the University Medical Center.

Researchers and physicians from the Medical Center's neurology, internal medicine and physiology departments will pool their resources, facilities and experience to find crucial answers to the questions of cell death and glucose control in the disease.

Investigations will take place in this new center, which as part of the University's proposed Life Sciences Initiative will include several existing labs of the Medical Center collaborating with diabetes research as their focus.

"We would like to assure (JDF) that we will do all we can to help

KIMITSU YOGACHI/Daily

Neurology department research fellow Catherine Delaney (left) gives a tour of the University Medical Center to John McDonough, chairman of the board of the

Juvenile Diabetes Foundation (right), his wife (center), and to JDF board member Desma Reid-Coleman yesterday. researchers succeed in finding a cure for diabetes," University President Lee Bollinger said.

"Everyone has a fantasy. Mine is to host the going-out-of-business party of the JDF," said JDF Chairman of the Board John McDonough, whose organization has raised more than $320 million toward diabetes research.

Ryan Dinkgrave, a 17-year-old junior from Stevenson High School in Livonia and a Type 1 diabetes patient, told the audience at the announcement ceremony yesterday how the disease has changed his life during the last seven years.

"I had no clue what it was when I was diagnosed with it," he said. "It wasn't easy. ... You have to learn a whole new way of life."

Dinkgrave, who wears aninsulin pump that feeds his body different allocations of insulin, created an award-winning Website to help teenagers and families of patients with diabetes.

The site, www.diabetes.cbyc.com, allows communication between patients about living with the disease and ways of "making life easier," Dinkgrave said.

Contrary to popular belief, insulin is not a cure for the disease. It allows a person to remain alive, but it does not protect patients from suffering blindness, heart attacks, kidney failure, strokes, nerve damage or amputations.

Common symptoms that Greene said students need to be on the lookout for include excessive thirst, urination and fatigue, as well as constant hunger or sudden weight loss.

Individuals who experience these signs are at a high risk of having Type 1 diabetes, or juvenile onset. The symptoms of Type 2, or adult onset diabetes, include sensitive skin, tingling of hands and feet, gum or urinary tract infections and excessive hunger and thirst.

Students who experience these symptoms are encouraged to visit a clinician and, if recommended, receive a free glucose test from the University Health Services to determine whether they have diabetes.