2025 PRESENTER PROFILES
Novel Nonpharmacologic Interventions to Modulate Insulin Resistance
Saturday, June 21, at 4:30 p.m. CT
Room W190 A • McCormick Place Convention Center
Exercise Training and Insulin Sensitivity—Targeting Muscle and Blood Flow
Jane EB Reusch, MD
Physician-Scientist,
University of Colorado
What is your presentation about?
Adults and youth with type 1 and type 2 diabetes have an impairment in maximal exercise capacity that is known to predict premature cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. We have been investigating the causes of this impairment in our translational research program (people and animal models). We observe that the classic microvascular dysfunction that causes retinal and renal disease in diabetes also contributes to the exercise impairment due to perfusion abnormalities in the heart and the skeletal muscle. Ongoing work is assessing the interaction of insulin sensitivity and skeletal muscle and cardiac perfusion with a goal to restore functional exercise capacity using a combination of exercise training and pharmacological intervention.
How do you hope your presentation will impact diabetes research or care?
This is a research program that is looking to identify strategies to improve function in people with diabetes and prolong their lives. The research agenda is to test interventions to reverse this functional exercise capacity. The clinical goal is to incorporate strategies that improve exercise capacity into clinical care and highlight the importance of exercise in the management of all forms of diabetes.
How did you become involved with this area of diabetes research or care?
I am an endocrinologist taking care of people with diabetes for the last 35 years. Early in my career I worked with a colleague, Dr. Judy Regensteiner, to test whether there was a problem with exercise capacity in women with diabetes, and we found that it was present even at diagnosis in uncomplicated diabetes. The implications of this have motivated decades of research.
