A skin secretion from a bizarre shrinking frog could one day help people with diabetes, according to Yasser Abdel-Wahab.

Abdel-Wahab, a researcher at the University of Ulster, is the lead on a team that has found a synthetic version of a peptide secreted by the paradoxical frog to prevent infection seems to stimulate insulin release (news coverage from BBC, PA, The Times, Belfast Telegraph).

The paradoxical frog, Pseudis paradoxa, is so called because it shrinks with age. While tadpoles can be nearly 30 cm long adults rarely exceed 4 cm.

It’s not clear exactly how the researchers demonstrated that the peptide stimulates release of insulin. The results will apparently be presented at this week’s Diabetes UK conference but the press release doesn’t say whether it was tested in animals or in Petri dishes.

“Now we need to take this a step further and put our work into practice to try and help people with Type 2 diabetes,” says Abdel-Wahab (Ulster press release). “More research is needed, but there is a growing body of work around natural anti-diabetic drug discovery that, as you can see, is already yielding fascinating results.”

Prize for getting the obvious pun in first goes to the Daily Mail:

The treatment of diabetes could be about to take a leap forward with the help of a South American frog.

Image: Yasser Abdel-Wahab / University of Ulster