Type I diabetics live without insulin in stem cell experiment

[Bolt_Gundam510]

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- Thirteen young diabetics in Brazil have ditched their insulin shots and need no other medication thanks to a risky, but promising treatment with their own stem cells -- apparently the first time such a feat has been accomplished.

Though too early to call it a cure, the procedure has enabled the young people, who have Type I diabetes, to live insulin-free so far, some as long as three years. The treatment involves stem cell transplants from the patients' own blood.

"It's the first time in the history of Type 1 diabetes where people have gone with no treatment whatsoever ... no medications at all, with normal blood sugars," said study co-author Dr. Richard Burt of Northwestern University's medical school in Chicago, Illinois.

While the procedure can be potentially life-threatening, none of the 15 patients in the study died or suffered lasting side effects. But it didn't work for two of them.

Larger, more rigorous studies are needed to determine whether stem cell transplants could become standard treatment for people with the disease once called juvenile diabetes. It is less common than Type 2 diabetes, which is associated with obesity.

The hazards of stem cell transplantation also raise questions about whether the study should have included children. One patient was as young as 14.

'Very promising time'

"It's the threshold of a very promising time for the field," said Dr. Jay Skyler of the Diabetes Research Institute at the University of Miami.

Skyler wrote an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which published the study, saying the results are likely to stimulate research that may lead to methods of preventing or reversing Type I diabetes.

"These are exciting results. They look impressive," said Dr. Gordon Weir of Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, Massachusetts.

Still, Weir cautioned that more studies are needed to make sure the treatment works and is safe. "It's really too early to suggest to people that this is a cure," he said.

The patients involved were ages 14 to 31 and had newly diagnosed Type 1 diabetes. An estimated 12 million to 24 million people worldwide -- including 1 to 2 million in the United States -- have this form of diabetes, which is typically diagnosed in children or young adults. An autoimmune disease, it occurs when the body attacks insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.

Insulin is needed to regulate blood sugar levels, which when too high, can lead to heart disease, blindness, nerve problems and kidney damage.

Burt said the stem cell transplant is designed to stop the body's immune attack on the pancreas.

A study published last year described a different kind of experimental transplant, using pancreas cells from donated cadavers, that enabled a few diabetics to give up insulin shots. But that requires lifelong use of anti-rejection medicine, which isn't needed by the Brazil patients since the stem cells were their own.

Source: CNN HEALTH

[Lammster]

This is great news. Despite the dangers, this is paving the way for better non-embryonic stem cell treatment. :unsure:

[Q Can Fix IT]

there are dangers in open heart surgery as well, yet how many lives were saved and improved and continue to be saved and improved every year, thanks to such a dangerous and originally controversial procedure