The hormone, called betatrophin, triggers the growth of pancreatic "beta" cells lost or ineffective in diabetes. Insulin is produced by beta cells in the pancreas.My husband wants some right now.
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In the journal Cell, a team led by Harvard's Peng Yi reports that betatrophin can produce a roughly seventeenfold increase in these cells, and its increase may partly explain the rapid growth of these cells seen during pregnancy to feed developing fetuses in mammals, including people.
(And an increase in insulin production explains the onset of Narcolepsy in some pregnant women. Huh.)
