Researchers from Stanford University Medical Center have conducted a study on mice in order to understand how the gestational diabetes occurs.

The study is published in the November 2 issue of the journal Science.

They found out that a protein called menin might be the key to gestational diabetes. Researchers concentrated on the insulin-producing parts of the pancreas called the islets. When gestate mice produced too much of the menin protein, the islets couldn’t grow properly.

This way, there was not enough insulin produced an mice developed gestational diabetes. Researchers also found out that that a hormone related to pregnancy, called prolactin is responsible for the body natural way of regulating the amount of menin. They gave this hormone to non-gestate mice and the menin levels dropped, and the islet cells grew as during pregnancy.

The menin pancreatic protein is known to prevent cancer in the pancreas and other organs, by blocking the growth of pancreatic cells.

Seung Kim, MD, PhD, associate professor of developmental biology at Stanford University of Medicine, stated also that less menin circulating was found in the obese mice system. This suggests that this protein might play a similar role in obesity-related type 2 diabetes.

This made researchers think that there is an internal code for controlling pancreatic islets growth. They intend to do further studies to discover this code.

These discoveries could lead to new treatments for gestational diabetes and other forms of the disease.