How diabetes hurts blood vessels

ST. LOUIS, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers suggest the lack of interaction of two enzymes may lead to blood vessel damage in those with diabetes.

Xiaochao Wei, a postdoctoral research scholar, and researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis say avoiding diabetic-linked blood vessel damage in mice involved two enzymes -- fatty acid synthase and nitric oxide synthase.

Wei discovered fatty acid synthase makes a lipid that attaches to nitric oxide synthase, allowing it to hook to the cell membrane and help make blood vessels normal and healthy.

"In animals that don't have fatty acid synthase and normal nitric oxide synthase in endothelial cells, we saw a lot of leaky blood vessels," researcher Dr. Clay Semenkovich says in a statement. "The mice also were more susceptible to the consequences of infection and they couldn't repair damage that occurred -- problems that also tend to be common in people with diabetes."

The study, published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, suggests this damage may occur in both type 1 and 2 diabetes.

"Both are associated with defects in fatty acid synthase," Semenkovich says.

Wei, Semenkovich and colleagues studied mice genetically engineered to make fatty acid synthase in all of their tissues except the endothelial cells that line blood vessels.