Frogs Offer Hope to Diabetics

'Shrinking' amphibian's skin holds key to new treatment alternatives
By Caroline Zimmerman,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 3, 2008 1:15 PM CST
Frogs Offer Hope to Diabetics
Amphibian skin secretions are a frequent focus for human medical research, including the development of a recently developed diabetes drug, exenatide, developed from a hormone in the saliva of the Gila monster, pictured here.   (Shutterstock.com)

A frog that lives in the Amazon secretes a substance that stimulates insulin release in humans, offering new hope to diabetics, the BBC reports. The South American shrinking frog, which grows smaller as it ages, produces pseudin-2 through its slimy skin. A synthetic version of the peptide worked even better than the real thing in lab tests conducted by scientists in Northern Ireland and the UAE.

Pseudin-2 shields the shrinking frog, Pseudis paradoxa, from infection; in humans, it stimulates insulin production in the pancreas without negative side effects. "More research is needed, but there is a growing body of work around natural anti-diabetic drug discovery that is already yielding fascinating results," a researcher told the London Times. (More frogs stories.)

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