End of daily injections for diabetes?
Scientists restore insulin production
The end of daily injections for diabetes sufferers could be in sight after scientists showed it is possible to restore insulin production for up to a year by boosting the immune system.
Millions of people around the world suffer from Type 1 diabetes and need to inject themselves daily to keep blood sugar levels under control. The disease attacks insulin-secreting cells in the pancreas. Healthy people have billions of peacekeeping cells called T-regs which protect insulin-making cells from the immune system but people suffering Type 1 diabetes do not have enough.
Now researchers at the University of California and Yale have shown that the T-regs can be removed from the body, increased by 1,500 times in the laboratory and infused back into the bloodstream to restore normal function.
An initial trial of 14 people has shown that the therapy is safe, and can last up to a year.
This could be a game-changer, said Dr Jeffrey Bluestone, Professor in Metabolism and Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco.
By using T-regs to re-educate the immune system, we may be able to really change the course of this disease. We expect T-regs to be an important part of diabetes therapy in the future, he added.
Not only does the treatment stop the need for regular insulin injections, but it prevents the disease progressing which could save sufferers from blindness and amputation in later life.
The research was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
Diabetes is an autoimmune disease. The immune system usually defends against infections, but in Type 1 diabetes the process goes awry and as well as fighting foreign invaders, it also targets the bodys own cells.
In the new procedure, doctors removed around two cups of blood containing around two to four million T-reg cells from 14 patients aged between 18 and 43 who had been recently diagnosed with diabetes. Their T-reg cells were separated from other cells and replicated in a growth medium, before being infused back into the blood.
Child psychologist Mary Rooney, 39, who was diagnosed with type diabetes in 2011, was the first trial participant, and said the therapy had freed her from the daily grind of injections.
Speaking of her diagnosis, Rooney said: After weeks of losing weight, always being thirsty, having blurry vision that would come and go, and generally feeling run-down, I knew something wasnt right. Type 1 diabetes was the furthest from my mind, though.
Initially, I was in a state of shock. I didnt realize that you could be diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes as an adult, she added.
Rooney, who worked as a researcher at the University of California soon learned that the institution was looking for patients for the T-reg trial, and asked to be enrolled.
The T-reg intervention frees people like me from the daily grind of insulin therapy and lifelong fear of complication, she said.
Source: The Telegraph
