{"id":60061,"date":"2019-09-27T16:58:33","date_gmt":"2019-09-27T20:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=60061"},"modified":"2025-09-30T10:41:27","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T14:41:27","slug":"pollutants-diabetes-new-discoveries","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/pollutants-diabetes-new-discoveries\/","title":{"rendered":"Pollutants and Diabetes: Carleton Lab Makes New Discoveries"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Pollutants and Diabetes: Carleton Lab Makes New Discoveries\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Jenny Bruin wants to better understand what environmental factors contribute to the onset and development of diabetes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her lab has completed a number of studies with a particular pollutant called dioxin, and in almost every study, there was an interesting outcome. <\/p>\n\n\n

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“Basically, females seem like they don’t adapt well to metabolic stress if they’ve had exposure to this pollutant and we don’t see the same thing in males,” Bruin says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

This exciting discovery points to the relationship between gender and environmental pollutants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bruin’s interest in diabetes began back when she was a graduate student. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We had a really cool rat model where we were looking at early life nicotine exposure and the male offspring from our rat model ended up developing diabetes,” she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The more involved she got with the project, the more interested she became in looking at other impacts on diabetes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We know from the human literature that if you have higher levels of pollutants in your blood, you have a higher risk of having diabetes,” Bruin says. “But we don’t know if the pollutants are actually causing diabetes or contributing in some way to the onset or development,” she adds.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Relationship to Diabetes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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That’s what her lab is trying to understand. Today, research is trying to determine if the pollutants are actually causing diabetes, somehow playing a role, or possibly just associated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless, Bruin believes pollutants have some sort of relationship to diabetes. <\/p>\n\n\n

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“We think that pollutants are potentially affecting the cells that secrete insulin,” she says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

What makes Bruin’s research so valuable is its Canadian perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We’re doing our best to develop models where we’re looking at exposure in a chronic low-dose system and at levels that would be reflective of the concentrations found in the blood of Canadians,” she says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bruin suspects that environmental factors include a range of risks like pollution, dietary factors, exercise, lifestyle and even exposure to viruses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PhD student Myriam Hoyeck has been looking at pancreas development at early points, such as fetal development and just after birth.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Prof.<\/figure>\n\n\n

Pollutants, Diabetes and Pregnancy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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“If a baby is exposed [to pollutants] by their mothers, such as in utero, as well as post-birth through maternal lactation, are we more susceptible to getting diabetes?” Hoyeck asks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She’s also looking into pregnancy. During pregnancy, a woman’s pancreas increases in size due to the demand of feeding a developing fetus. If pollutants affect the mother’s pancreas, there is a potential health risk involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Staying true to her innovative approach, Bruin’s lab is attempting to look at pollutants that have not been studied a lot in the past. <\/p>\n\n\n

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“We’re moving into an area that is going to be a bit trickier where we’re going to be screening for new pollutants and, in some cases, we don’t know a lot about them,” she says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

“I think this is a huge area of research right now, trying to understand what environmental factors are contributing to the rise in diabetes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We know that the number of people developing diabetes, both type 1 and type 2, is continually increasing and genetic risk doesn’t explain why numbers are increasing.”<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Pollutants<\/figure>\n\n\n

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\nMore Stories<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jenny Bruin wants to better understand what environmental factors contribute to the onset and development of diabetes. Her lab has completed a number of studies with a particular pollutant called dioxin, and in almost every study, there was an interesting outcome. “Basically, females seem like they don’t adapt well to metabolic stress if they’ve had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":62364,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[54,13],"cu_story_tag":[1919],"class_list":["post-60061","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-health-wellness","cu_story_type-research-discovery","cu_story_tag-faculty-of-science"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"blueprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/60061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/60061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97395,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/60061\/revisions\/97395"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=60061"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=60061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}