Statistics
About 1 in 4,000 children in the United States will develop mitochondrial disease by the age of 10 years. Up to 4,000 children per year in the US are born with a type of mitochondrial disease. Because mitochondrial disorders contain many variations and subsets, some particular mitochondrial disorders are very rare.
Many diseases of aging are caused by defects in mitochondrial function. Since the mitochondria are responsible for processing oxygen and converting substances from the foods we eat into energy for essential cellular functions, if there are problems with the mitochondria, it can lead to many defects for adults. These include Type 2 diabetes, Parkinson's disease, atherosclerotic heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer. Many medicines can also injure the mitochondria.
"Inside the Cell" in Dr. Neal Barnard's Program for Reversing Diabetes, Rodale Press, 2007, pp. 22 – 27, which references the Feb 12, 2004 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, an article by Yale University researchers. Dr. Barnard also references other studies in his explanation of how, in Type 2 diabetes, the mitochondria signaling process is interrupted by fats in body cells (intramyocellular lipids) which have not been properly treated. A study at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, LA (Diabetes 54, 2005 1926-33) showed that this in turn partially disables the genes that produce mitochondria.
Read more about this topic: Mitochondrial Disease
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