Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, N.C.

— -- As I'm sure most of you are aware, today there's an epidemic of diabetes and obesity here in eastern North Carolina, throughout the state, throughout the U.S., and throughout the world. We're working diligently to try to, in research, to try to find ways to help these problems. In the diabetes field, we're particularly interested in diabetic neuropathy, or nerve damage, which causes people to have ulcers and lose their extremities. We're looking at ways that we maybe affect how people walk, to prevent that, analyzing the gait of people who have diabetic neuropathy. We're also looking at the new drugs, for people who have painful diabetic neuropathy. In addition we're looking at some new sensors to measure glucose, in patients with type 1 diabetes.

In the obesity field, there's a long history here at East Carolina University, Dr. Walter Pories was the first person to show that the gastric bypass reversed diabetes in 85 percent of cases. And the director of surgery division that's part of the diabetes obesity center, there's ongoing research trying to understand better what changes in hormones in the gut may contribute to weight gain, and weight loss, in surgery, or with medication.

We're also doing a tremendous amount of work with exercise, trying to determine which exercises are better for weight loss, and also what are the differences between African Americans and Caucasians in terms of how they gain weight, and the difficulty losing weight, and how exercise may help that.

This is just a short highlight of what's happening at East Carolina University but because the problems of diabetes and obesity are so great, we need to utilize all our resources to continue to work to help patients who suffer from these problems.

Click here for more information on diabetes treatment and research at the Diabetes and Obesity Center, Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University