Grant: Project Grant

People with Crohn's disease have an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. We do not understand why people with Crohn's disease develop diabetes or how to prevent it. My laboratory has developed a mouse model that gets a disease very much like Crohn's disease. In these mice, we have found that a "leaky gut" leads to bacteria moving from the gut into surrounding fat tissues. We also see inflammation in that fat tissue and in the pancreas. The pancreas is where insulin production happens and insulin production fails when people become diabetic. The mice with Crohn's disease develop diabetes more quickly on a high fat Western diet than mice without Crohn's disease. In this research, we are going to ask if we can prevent development of diabetes in two mouse models of Crohn's disease by blocking inflammation in the gut to show that this is why mice develop diabetes. We are also going to target macrophages, a type of white blood cell that cause inflammation in the pancreas leading to diabetes. We will see if we can prevent the development of diabetes in mice with Crohn's disease by blocking macrophage inflammation. These studies will tell us whether a leaky gut is the link between Crohn's disease and diabetes risk, and if we can prevent this awful complication to improve long-term health outcomes for people with Crohn's disease.