New MRI Technique Can Detect Diabetes

MonkeyBoy writes "Researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center and Massachusetts General Hospital have unveiled a new magnetic nanoparticle based magnetic resonance imaging technique that can detect diabetes even before clinical symptoms. In mice they were able to take non-invasive images of pancreatic inflammation and its reversal for type 1 diabetes. Full article is available as a PDF from Pubmedcentral. Will we see rapid translation of these pre-clinical observations to prediction and/or stratification of type 1 diabetes and treatment of individuals with the disease? This would provide a crucially needed early predictor of response to therapy. As an added bonus it looks like the analysis was done on a Linux box too."

Comments

Re:MRI

[rcolquhoun]

I have heard from several people that have had an MRI that (a) it is almost impossible to get scheduled in any reasonable timeframe for one and (b) they are 'incredibly expensive'.


So is diabetes.

I am a type 1 diabetic and it costs thousands perhaps 10's of thousands per year to manage(if you include side effects, lost opportunities etc). This will be the case for the rest of my life(hopefully 50+ years, although diabetes has a major effect in shortening it).

If it can be prevented by a series of MRI's + drugs or any other treatment for that matter that costs less than say $100k if will be economic for most pre-type 1 patients(ie children) to undertake.

  - Robert