Effects of a Proteoglycan on Type 2 Diabetic Rats and the Recovery of Rat Pancreatic Islets.

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) results from both insulin resistance and pancreatic β-cell dysfunction. A natural proteoglycan extracted from , namely, , has been demonstrated to be capable of ameliorating insulin resistance in previous work. In this work, a T2D rat model induced by streptozocin (STZ) and a high-fat diet was used to investigate the effects of on pancreatic functions, and the transcriptomics of the rat pancreas was used to investigate the biological processes (BP) and signal pathways influenced by on the gene basis. Furthermore, the results of transcriptomics were verified both by histopathological analyses and protein expression. The studies showed that positively regulated T2D-related BP and signaling pathways and recovered the pancreatic function, therefore ameliorating hyperglycemia and hyperlipidemia . Importantly, the recovery of the pancreatic function suggested a crucial strategy to radically treat T2D.