Intususseption

One step nearer to a diabetes cure

It is more than 80 years since insulin was first used in the treatment of early-onset diabetes, but it was never a 'cure' in the sense that it treated the illness once and for all.

Such a cure, long dreamed of, would not only prevent the long-term complications of diabetes, such as kidney failure and blindness, but relieve sufferers of the need to inject themselves once, twice or three times daily.

One possible cure is to transplant the pancreas, which contains the cells that produce the insulin that early-onset diabetics lack. However, the number of diabetics greatly exceeds the possible number of organs for transplant (unless one day animal organs can be used). Therefore another method must be found.

One step towards a possible cure is the injection of the cells that actually produce insulin into the portal vein, rather than transplantation of the whole pancreas. A trial of this treatment was published in the New England Journal of Medicine last month.

Thirty-six diabetics with unstable diabetes underwent the treatment. Because of its complexity, serious side-effects were common, caused both by the procedure itself and the subsequent immunosuppression necessary to allow the insulin-producing cells to be accepted by their new host.

However, some of the results were encouraging and 16 of the patients were able to do without insulin for at least a year afterwards.

This is not a cure, but perhaps the beginning of one. Considering the experimental nature of the treatment, the subjects who agreed to it should be heroes to their fellow diabetics.

posted by Intussusception Medical Care Amateur - @ Intususseption: One step nearer to a diabetes cure