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NIH Confirms Protocol To Reverse Type 1 Diabetes
FiReaNGeL writes "In 2001, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital demonstrated the efficacy of a protocol to reverse type 1 diabetes in diabetic mice. New data from a study performed at the National Institutes of Health provides additional confirmation of the ability to reverse type 1 diabetes and on the role of spleen cells in islet regeneration. Spleen cells appear to contribute to islet recovery more in mice who are older and with more advanced diabetes compared with younger mice with less advanced diabetes, in which regeneration of remaining islets may be the dominant mechanism."
better than never, and diabetes, though the complications can be gruesome, if managed well is more of a nuisance than a terror. For many, diabetes is a very manageable problem, but instances do occur with circulation problems to the limbs that require amputation. It'll be great when this cure hits the streets, and as with anything, the sooner the better, but rather than complaining that it'll take years before being available to humans, why don't we celebrate the fact that a cure is officially in sight?
That just shows, if the protocol had been released under the BSD or even GPL license, we could have ported it to humans by now.
liqbase
I must be missing something ... if the technique was first described and shown in 2001, then reaffirmed in 2003, why haven't they moved forward with trying to treat humans with severe/end-stage diabetes? In fact, they don't even discuss the possibility, which makes me wonder if there is something else in play (bad side effects for example). This sounds like a MAJOR medical breakthrough, and typically breakthroughs like this are pushed into more expanded trials and even human tests faster than the researchers at MGH are moving forward.
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Do you understand the difference between Type 1 & Type 2 diabetes? I do not consider needing to give insulin shots 4 times per day to my 21 month old daughter "manageable". She is now 9 and wearing an insulin pump, which means we change her infusion set (a fairly large needle inserted under the skin on her stomach or back) every three days. Type 1 diabetes cannot be managed by diet, exercise & pills!!!
Who cares about NIH - does Netcraft confirm it?
Uh, gee, could we make sure we have it right first? This isn't a light switch that they are flipping here. We are trudging about in areas that we don't understand yet. They are still making guesses about the mechanism by which it works!
In 2001 one researcher managed to come up with a repair in mice and published. Then other scientists couldn't repeat the findings. Now a few years later we have scientists who can repeat the findings. Sounds like it is progressing very well and at a pace that you would expect it to progress at.
Master - Grasshopper, you must learn patience...
student - Yeah,yeah,yeah... How long does that take?
It gets me sometimes when comments I see in medical threads are just plain ignorant. Yes, this is only in stage 1 trials. Still, promising results *are* the therapies of the future, and they are relevant and interesting. They are especially relevant when speaking of treating something so widespread and degenerative as diabetes. This already has been an age of miracles, folks. Enjoy what the next 10 years will bring.
It is very important to note that this is a treatment for reversing Type I diabetes, not Type II.
Type I diabetes comes from an autoimmune reaction against the insulin-producing cells. It is more common in children, and accounts for about 10% of all insulin cases.
Type II diabetes tends to be caused by an insulin insensitivity - the insulin receptor in cells looses its effectiveness. The complications from Type II diabetes tend to be worse, and none of them are pleasant. There are many risk factors for Type II diabetes, some of which a person can't do anything about (i.e., genetic predisposition), but the primary risk factor is obesity and inactivity. So, for the foreseeable future, doctors will no doubt continue to caution people to be vigilant about their weight and, for those under treatment for diabetes, to still be especially vigilant about monitoring their blood sugar levels.
For young children, its burdensome, sure but everybody that has to do it gets used to it, just like anyone who has to take any kind of medicine- regardless whether its IM, IV or PO. I wasn't saying that what people go through isn't troublesome, and everyone needs shots at different intervals- everyone is different. There are exceptions to everything. Anyway, my overall point was that rather than saying, well geeze, it'll be 4-6 years before its available, waah- we should be saying Thank Someone that there's even a chance of a cure, otherwise you and your daughter are guaranteed to be doing those shots for a long time to come- now you may only have to do it a few more years- if even that. Insulin pumps have come a long way and are better than giving shots- maybe something better (transdermal patch?) will come along between now and when the 'cure' is available. I happen to know a relative who is Type 1 diabetic and has received awards for having the disease for longer than the vast majority of people (I think he's around 80 and has had it since he was young)- but he's been giving himself shots several times a day his whole life and still manages to have a pretty good existence- he used to run even up to a few years ago, still walks a lot, etc. Its a part of his life and it doesn't slow him down. On the same token, I know another friend and her husband who are in their late 50's and have nearly had to have legs amputated. There's someone on every end of the spectrum, as I said originally- but just be thankful you can look forward to the day you don't have to give those shots anymore, or she may never have to do it herself.
sarcasm aside, I often wonder why people can't voluntarily submit themselves to whatever they want. All these laws we have are designed in large part to prevent involuntary testing- but if someone like Jonas Salk is willing to die to test a vaccine or treatment, why stop them? I'm not a big fan of animal testing as it is- though I accept it as somewhat of a necessary evil- but I really don't see why if we want to have a limb taken off, added on, grow boobs, have them taken off, whatever, that we can't just do what we want as long as we're aware of the consequences and are of sufficient age and sound mind to make the decision. I wonder if when we live in the Star Trek world (hah?) medicines will indeed be under something like the GPL? Feel free to make it better, but give it back to the world?
I often wonder why people can't voluntarily submit themselves to whatever they want.
OK, look at it the other way. Just because you're prepared to die to test out a new treatment doesn't mean that I'm prepared to kill you with it. We usually have to be pretty darned sure that something won't be harmful before starting testing on humans.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Type 1 diabetes cannot be managed by diet, exercise & pills!!!
Insulin pumps can be pretty darned dangerous, too. Over 25% of diabetes related deaths are actually due to (accidental or intentional) insulin overdose. At least it's nice to know that people are working on the problem though.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Calm down people. They haven't cured diabetes; in fact, this cure for diabetes (in mice) isn't new at all. This isn't a phase I clinical trial. They haven't tried it on people, and I really doubt the FDA will approve any such trials in the next few years.
The controversy is over the role of stem cells. No one disputes that adding Freund's adjuvant to the NOD mice can cure their diabetes, and it seems to work through a hazily-understood modulation of the immune system. That has been established for 15 years. The question is whether adding spleen stem cells to the adjuvant facilitates the process.
When Faustman first published the paper stating the spleen cells were crucial, the NIH quietly contracted three independent labs to confirm the result. No one could could show that the transplanted spleen cells were actually doing anything. Now, it seems that Faustman's group has responded to some of the criticisms, repeated the experiments, and can reproduce their own data. But as long as another lab cannot reproduce it, the role of stem cells will remain very controversial.
Why hasn't there been more of a push to use this in people? The problem in people is that you have to inject the adjuvant fairly early in the disease, and most people with type I diabetes are diagnosed pretty late when most of their beta cells have died. Additionally, no one really knows how exactly the adjuvant works (it's just a bunch of dead bacteria) and whether it will elicit nasty reactions in people that are worse than diabetes itself.
For those technical, you can read the actual papers for free online.
I'm not a diabetic myself (so far, anyway) but I've had several relatives that were Type II, and I knew a girl who was a Type I that died at thirty from complications from it. And this was an individual that exercised, kept her weight down, monitored her glucose level constantly and took care of herself way better than most. She said once evening, rather sadly, "Diabetes really sucks." My father also died of complications due to his diabetes mellitus, and I took care of him the last three years of his life before the final heart attack took him. Or perhaps it was a stroke, hard to say. At least he still had all of his limbs, although for ten years previously he couldn't feel them because severe neuropathy killed most of the sensory nerves.
... the girl I mentioned had multiple eye problems requiring surgery (retinal bleeding and so forth, my father had them too), they had to temporarily remove and freeze her eyeballs to fix it. They had to remove part of her intestines at one point. My father had multiple heart attacks, strokes, pacemaker, bone infections, total renal shutdown (home dialysis) and in the end was bedridden for two years before he died. And for about fifteen years he had neuropathic pain that was neverending, and at times was like continuous electric shocks. Yes, he had it worse than most, but there are many who aren't far behind.
... I think I'd pick a nice fast-growing cancer. Oat-cell carcinoma, maybe.
My point is that you may indeed know a "successful" diabetic, but for every one of those there are dozens that suffer terribly. It's a degenerative disease
So, while I agree with you that it's a wonderful thing that something resembling a "cure" may be on the way, believe me, maintaining a tolerable existence is very difficult for many of those so afflicted. It's a rough disease, it really is, and it affects every aspect of your life. About six months before he died, my father said, "I think I should go off the dialysis." Apparently, renal failure is a fairly decent way to go: you drop into a coma and die shortly afterwards. I talked him out of it then, although if I had it to do over again I wouldn't.
I've also lost relatives to different varieties of cancer, and frankly, if I had to choose one or the other as my way to go
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Type 1 takes over your life. It's horrible for kids. Steals much joy from being young.
You *must* watch your diet all the time or risk coma/death very quickly in the short term, or bad side effects (blindness, loss of limbs, organ failure) in the long term. Getting drunk can get a person in trouble fast, especially if vomitting occurs.
First time your friends see you get sugar low, you'll get looked on as a freak by many people. A sugar low means you'll lose thinking ability (you look dumb) and won't realize what you're doing or what's going on.
This leads quickly (just a few minutes sometimes) to passing out (possible convulsions, spasms) and possibly coma/death if no one knows what's happening. This is all very disturbing to people, even if they know what's happening...and these are just kids.
One diabetic I know had a reaction while driving and got dumb (talking but no real thinking happening) - had five cop cars chasing him before he crashed. The passenger was pretty much freaking - he'd just been talking to the driver and then he just went off into la-la land. *No one* knew what was happening (he did have a medic-alert bracelet but no one noticed)...the cops assumed he was on drugs.
Lucky for him, they called his dad. One cup of juice and 5 minutes, and he was back. The police were surprisingly understanding. Didn't remember anything, though, and he was pissed cause it was so embarrassing.
It's definitely not appealing for getting dates.
Now picture getting sick. You've taken your insulin shot in the morning...not being able to eat means you might need to go to the hospital. You can't let your blood sugar get too low, and the insulin keeps working whether you eat or not.
Worse yet, you could get sick while camping.
Travelling...having to explain about the needles you have while crossing borders over and over. Keeping the insulin good for long periods when travelling in warm weather.
This list keeps going on. I'm not a diabetic, but I'm closely related to some.
-- Life is good. Tastes like chicken.
Thank you for the insightful post. I'm a 19 y/o Type 1 Diabetic, and have had to deal with many of the situations you wrote about in your post.
Type 1 Diabetes is not fun to have, and it's not something to be shrugged off. I'm sure that some diabetics experience less problems than others, but it's not a disease to be shrugged off as if talking about a wart or a cold. My life is a bit more complex now than my pre-diabetic life; Every day I must constantly keep track of my insulin, food, and exercise, and that creates limitations. I have to do a lot of extra thought and planning when going out of the house, doing something different in my regular schedule, etc.
It's easy to forget a small detail and then have a bad blood sugar because of it. I decide to go for a longer walk one day, and in the middle of the night I wake up with cold sweats and pounding heartbeat, drag myself to the kitchen and find out I have a very low sugar. Have to eat in the middle of the night which isn't enjoyable for me, and then brush teeth etc and get back to bed and try falling asleep again.
Or hanging out with friends, and not adhering to a strict schedule, also causes problems and confusion as to diet and insulin planning.
I really hope some cure can be found, because I'm not particularly fond of the idea I may have a shorter lifespan, am a likely candidate for a heart attack when I'm older (3/4 diabetics die of heart attack), might have to get legs amputated, might go blind, etc.
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