U.S, Feb. 20 -- For years, researchers have noticed that people living in high-altitude regions are often prone to diabetes. Based on this notion, researchers at the Gladstone Institutes explored the biological reason behind this.

During the research, Isha Jain's team studied hypoxia, a condition where oxygen levels in the blood drop, and how it affects the body. In earlier studies, they saw that mice exposed to low oxygen had much lower blood sugar levels. After eating, their bodies cleared sugar from the blood quickly, which is something that usually lowers the risk of diabetes.

"When we gave sugar to the mice in hypoxia, it disappeared from their bloodstream almost instantly," said first author Yolanda Marti-Mateos, a postdoctoral sc...