La Fleur S.E.: Brain mediators in diet-induced obesity and diabetes

Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus is a rapidly growing epidemic. Obesity has been identified as one of the main risks for this disease and increased intake of saturated fat and sugar increases the risk to develop Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus. Our first interest is to understand how nutrients affect the brain and how these changes mediate the overeating as observed in (most) obese people. Secondly, although peripheral actions of both fat and sugar will affect glucose metabolism, it does not explain why some obese individuals become diabetic and why others do not. We therefore focus on the effects of nutrients on the brain as an alternative route via which high caloric diets might mediate the development of diabetes.

We study these research questions with a translational approach using both diet-induced obese animals and human experimental studies. This translational approach is possible because of a close collaboration with the group of dr MJ Serlie within the Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism and the group of Prof dr J Booij from the Department of Nuclear Medicine.