'Shed a gram' to curb diabetes, slowing onset of Alzheimer's and daily insulin injections could be a thing of the past

Scientists say people can cut their risk of developing diabetes by dropping as little as a gram of body fat, the Daily Express reports this morning.

It comes after they found that people could reverse diabetic state by losing weight and the build-up of fat in the pancreas.

Lead researcher Professor Roy Taylor from Newcastle University said: ’What is interesting is that regardless of your present body weight and how you lose weight, the critical factor in reversing your Type 2 diabetes is losing that one gram of fat from the pancreas.’

Elsewhere, The Telegraph reports on a gene mutation that could ‘slow the onset of Alzheimer’s by 17 years’.

The variant of the APOE gene – which apparently helps prevent the build-up of amyloid plaques – was discovered by comparing people in a Columbian town with high prevalence of a very early onset form of dementia

The study’s authors hope therapies could be developed to slow the disease.

Professor Mauricio Arcos-Burgos, a medical geneticist at the Australian National University, said: ’If you can work out how to decelerate the disease, then you can have a profound impact.’

Lastly, daily injections of insulin could be a thing of the past for people with type 1 diabetes with promise of a new ’blood therapy’ for the condition, reports The Times.

The therapy involves harnessing T-regulatory immune cells that protect against auto-immune attack on the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.

Researchers have so far used the therapy in a trial in 14 patients and reported it was successful with ‘no serious complications’, the paper says.