While it is well known that type 2 diabetes is linked to obesity now a team of researchers have a better understanding of exactly what happens in the body that leads up to type 2 diabetes and what likely causes some of the complications related to the disease. Scientists from Denmark have found that in mice macrophages a specific type of immune cell invade the diabetic pancreatic tissue during the early stages of the disease. Then these inflammatory cells produce a large amount of pro-inflammatory proteins called cytokines which directly contribute to the elimination of insulin-producing beta cells in the
