Worldwide, more than 400 million people live with diabetes and more than two billion people are obese.
University of Northern British Columbia biomedical researcher Dr. Sarah Gray is exploring underlying mechanisms of obesity and type 2 diabetes. As the Canada Research Chair in the Integrative Physiology of Diabetes, Gray is interested in how hormones control body weight. She has a specific interest in how adipose tissue function is affected by hormones in obesity.
“Novel strategies to reduce diabetes prevalence are urgently needed,” says Gray, an Associate Professor in the Northern Medical Program. “My research aims to understand the biological processes linking obesity with diabetes.”
Diabetes is a chronic disease caused either by the body’s inability to produce insulin or use the insulin it does produce. It is a major cause of blindness, kidney failure, heart attack, stroke and lower limb amputation. In 2015, the World Health Organization estimates that 1.6 million people died worldwide due directly to the illness.
“Our goal is to identify therapeutic targets to reverse or else prevent diabetes. We want to provide empirical evidence to support lifestyle interventions,” Gray says.
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