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2018 Abstracts

The Effects of Cocoa Flavonols on β Cell Survival

Brooke Smyth; Lauren Manwaring; Moroni Lopez, Brigham Young University

Diabetes is one of the fastest growing international health crises; in fact, the number of people diagnosed with diabetes has risen from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2015. One of the central features of diabetes, especially of type 2 diabetes, is gradual β-cell death due to hyperglycemia and exposure to high levels of fatty acids. The role of β-cells is to produce insulin in the pancreas. When these cells die, this places the burden to produce insulin on the few β-cells that remain, reducing the overall amount of insulin produced and resulting in diabetes. Cocoa flavonols (which may take the form of monomers, polymers, oligomers, or pure extract) have been shown to prevent the overproduction of reactive oxygen species, which initiate multiple signaling cascades leading to apoptosis or cell death. Incorporating this information, we have found that β-cells, when exposed to cocoa flavonols in the midst of palmitate (a fatty acid which induces a type 2 diabetes state), have increased cell survival as compared to cells which receive no cocoa flavonols. These data provide great support for the potential which cocoa has to ameliorate β-cell death, which could greatly aid in the treatment of diabetes.