7 Healthcast: Diabetes Pill

Millions of diabetics control their insulin several times a day. But researchers at Joslin Diabetes Clinic hope one day to fight type II diabetes with a simple pill. It's an aspirin-like drug called salisalates, and in animal trials, it reduces the symptoms of type II diabetes.

Dr. Steven Shoelson, Joslin Diabetes Clinic
"There is an old history salisalates actually having some use in diabetes. So we put those two bits of the puzzle together and asked whether sales would have effects in toning down the inflammation secondary to obesity and that's exactly what we found."

Type II diabetes has long been associated with obesity. Researchers discovered a so-called "master switch" in the liver that is turned on when people get obese. This causes low levels of inflammation that disrupts the insulin process - causing the diabetes.

Their study shows that in mice salisalates can prevent the whole chain of events.

Dr. Steven Shoelson, Joslin Diabetes Clinic
"As we begin to understand these pathways and we begin to understand how anti-inflammatory drugs may be useful we can discover new ways to treat it in patients that can't lose the weight for example

Still, Dr. Shoelson says this hasn't been proven in humans yet. For now - his advice is pretty simple.

While we can't recommend using these drugs today we can make recommendations today and those recommendations are familiar to pretty much everyone, and that is to exercise, lose some weight and eat a healthy diet.

While human tests are underway - it's a very small study and no results have been published yet. Dr. Shoelson is working on getting funding for a larger, multi-city clinical trial.