High blood sugar weakened skin antifungal defenses in mice
Blocking a fungal-sensing protein improved antifungal defenses in experiments with mice that had high blood sugar.
Our read
Mechanisms- Studied:
- Experiments in mice with high blood sugar, against comparison mice
- What changed:
- Mice with high blood sugar developed larger skin lesions and carried more Candida albicans than comparison mice
- The catch:
- Lesions and fungal loads were reported, but long-term infection clearance was not reported
- In the record:
- One of 672 papers on liraglutide on record: 177 with results in people, 66 in animals.
Editor of record: Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
Mice with high blood sugar developed larger skin lesions and carried more Candida albicans, a fungus, than comparison mice in animal experiments. They also had larger abscesses, or pockets of pus, and poorer control of fungal invasion. In infected diabetic mice, lowering blood sugar with liraglutide reduced lesion size and the amount of fungus.
In experiments with cells grown in the lab, high glucose impaired fungal ingestion by immune cells and keratinocytes, the main cells in the skin’s outer layer. Blocking or deleting Dectin-1, a protein that recognizes fungi, restored fungal uptake under high-glucose conditions. Blocking or deleting it also improved antifungal defenses in mice. The authors concluded that high blood sugar can turn fungal recognition pathways into sources of harmful inflammation.
Why it matters
Understanding susceptibility to skin infections in diabetes may help guide work on preserving immune defenses during aging.
Caveats
The experiments tested mice and cells grown in the lab. They do not show whether blocking Dectin-1 would improve fungal skin infections in people with diabetes.
The paper
Hyperglycemia promotes maladaptive Dectin-1 signaling and impairs skin antifungal host defense
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Infection and Immunity, Nov 12, 2026, CC BY
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