You’ve likely heard about probiotics—live bacteria with long, colorful names found in your yogurt that help generate a happy gut. You may have even heard of prebiotics, which are compounds that have a beneficial effect on the bacteria in your body. But you’re probably less familiar with postbiotics—factors derived from bacteria that can also have a positive impact on our health.

Researchers at McMaster University who study diabetes and obesity have discovered a postbiotic factor called MDP that prevents pre-diabetic obese mice from developing diabetes.

When bacteria in the gut become chronically out of balance—known as intestinal dysbiosis—a person can become insulin resistant, or prediabetic. Dysbiosis is often found in people with obesity. “Key markers on the road to diabetes are insulin sensitivity and insulin resistance—how well that hormone can lower blood glucose,” Jon Schertzer, lead study author and assistant professor of biochemistry at McMaster University tells Mental Floss. Insulin’s job is to bring your blood glucose back up to normal after you eat or drink something. If you’re insulin resistant, or improperly sensitive, insulin can’t do its job properly. “What a postbiotic does is allow the insulin to do a better job,” he says.

Schertzer’s team sought to investigate whether postbiotics could have an impact on obesity before a person becomes overtly diabetic. “The focus of this study is prediabetes—the stage before the overt disease has developed and it’s still reversible. Obesity is the biggest risk factor for prediabetes,” he explains.

The team found that a postbiotic called muramyl dipeptide (MDP), derived from a bacterial cell wall, was able to reduce insulin resistance in mouse models—regardless of weight loss or changes in the intestinal microbiome during obesity.