Health committee  The answer is that we don't precisely know, so we're taking a very wide-angle lens. Environmental triggers are being looked at. There was a study, for example, published last year from China, where type 1 diabetes is occurring. Bisphenol A, the stuff in hard plastics, might be

Health committee  Absolutely, yes. You heard the Edmonton Protocol mentioned a few times. Canada is well known in that regard for leading stem cell therapy to derive cells that could act like a pancreas. A pancreatic cell that produces insulin is on the horizon. It's not pie-in-the-sky thinking,

Health committee  It's the next step. Instead of transferring islet cells from a human subject, it's taking cells from the skin, say, and telling those skins cells, no, we don't want you to be a skin cell anymore, we want you to become a pancreas cell that produces insulin. That is not far from th

Health committee  There is a lot of interest in the geographic representation of type 1 diabetes. It is considered that it falls in a category of so-called autoimmune diseases, where the body has fought against something and then it ends up fighting against itself. In the case of type 1 diabetes,

Health committee  It's what's called a complex polygenic disorder. It's a big term, but it means that multiple genes from both the mom and the dad are risk factors for both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Lots of excellent researchers around the world, including the group from Montreal Children's Hosp

Health committee  That's a great question. Dr. Legault maybe can answer as well. One of the things is that there may be epigenetic modification. It's certainly not just the genes. It's got to be something else more complicated, like environmental exposure or epigenetic modification. We don't know

Health committee  Yes, I can. Thank you for the question. Indeed, this has been brought up as an issue. CIHR has been involved in the context of evaluating a research effort to look at other than synthetic insulin, like pork-derived insulin, so we have been in discussions with Health Canada, affec

Health committee  You're absolutely correct, so there is an ongoing issue of monitoring and seeing what's available. There isn't a local source, as you say, so that still is—because the volume for the pharmaceutical producers is not high enough in Canada, but there is an international source. A

Health committee  Thank you for this opportunity to speak about the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and our support of diabetes research in Canada to mark Diabetes Awareness Month. I am the scientific director of the CIHR Institute of Nutrition, Metabolism and Diabetes, and I'm a staff pe

Health committee  It is a very good question, and I'll take it on as best I can. You are absolutely correct. There is a genetic predisposition to body weight...very thin or very overweight. But the obesity epidemic has occurred in one generation, so there is basically a lot more going on than ge

Health committee  CIHR was involved in the research aspect of the sodium working group. We were involved with partners in industry on the food science. There's a very strong nutritional science academic community in Canada that's been working in partnership with industry, because, as you point out

Health committee  I think that's put very well. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, if you can. So it's about identifying the underlying causes of obesity, because it does drive diabetes and cardiovascular disease, as you've heard. The earlier one can intervene, the better it will be.

Health committee  The observation is that's the group that had the biggest impact. Why? That's what we need to know next. It was the observation that was made. I can't tell you why.

Health committee  The work is in progress so we don't have the final evidence. Usually the research is funded for a period of time, typically between three and five years, and then the results sometimes take even a little longer than that. The work has been funded and we're awaiting the results. I

Health committee  I'm a pediatrician who is interested in obesity, so I do follow this. There is a literature on this that the kinds of video games that children choose, or are encouraged to choose, do have an impact on energy expenditure. So it turns out that some of these interactive games reall