A diet high in saturated fats raises the risk of type 2 diabetes — perhaps owing to the activity of an inflammatory protein complex called the inflammasome.
Jenny Ting and her team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that a saturated fatty acid called palmitate stimulates the inflammasome — which activates the inflammatory response — in cultured mouse macrophages, a type of immune cell. An unsaturated fat did not do this. The macrophages, in turn, produced a potent inflammatory molecule called IL-1β that blocked insulin signalling in cultured liver cells. Macrophages lacking key components of the inflammasome did not interfere with insulin signalling.
Mice fed a high-fat diet for 12 weeks developed insulin resistance in liver, fat and muscle tissue, along with other signs of type 2 diabetes, but those that lacked inflammasome genes did not.
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Saturated fats up inflammation. Nature 472, 139 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/472139b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/472139b
