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Can Two Injections of Tuberculosis Vaccine Cure Diabetes? (fortune.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Fortune:
The causes of Type 1 diabetes can be significantly reversed over several years with just two injections of a common tuberculosis vaccine injected a few weeks apart, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital announced Thursday in a paper published in the journal Nature. Researchers found a substantial reduction in the blood-sugar marker HbA1c that is used to diagnose diabetes.
All subjects with diabetes who received the vaccine had a 10% reduction after three years and 18% after four years, bringing them below the cutoff point for a clinical diagnosis. Those subjects followed for a full eight years retained most of the reduction. Participants who received a placebo or were in a reference group that followed normal diabetic management saw their blood sugar measurement rise by a few percentage points during the same periods followed... A 10% reduction in Hb1Ac reduces the risk of death as a result of diabetes by 21%, and drops by 37% other complications, like blindness and loss of feeling in hands and feet, according to a 2000 study.
All subjects with diabetes who received the vaccine had a 10% reduction after three years and 18% after four years, bringing them below the cutoff point for a clinical diagnosis. Those subjects followed for a full eight years retained most of the reduction. Participants who received a placebo or were in a reference group that followed normal diabetic management saw their blood sugar measurement rise by a few percentage points during the same periods followed... A 10% reduction in Hb1Ac reduces the risk of death as a result of diabetes by 21%, and drops by 37% other complications, like blindness and loss of feeling in hands and feet, according to a 2000 study.
To be clear, the intervention is not a cure for type I diabetes mellitus. The authors go out of there way to prove and explain this:
"In this study we observe the long term and stable lowering of blood sugars in humans after BCG vaccinations. In the human, this stable blood sugar control was not driven primarily in these human subjects by pancreas recovery or regeneration. The human pancreas after BCG even at four years after repeat vaccinations did not secrete significant insulin as clinically measured by C-peptide. The mechanism for lowered HbA1c values was not equivalent to the NOD diabetic mouse pancreas regeneration after BCG treatment, despite equally restored and long term improved blood sugar control. The BCG-treated type 1 diabetic subjects at year 4 after glucagon challenge had a negligible to no return of clinically significant C-peptide. The C-peptide values after glucagon were in the range of 2–3 pmol/L of C-peptide (Fig. 1c), but with no known clinical significance. Therefore we concluded that BCG vaccinations did not induce a clinically meaningful return of C-peptide levels in the pancreas by regeneration, as observed in the NOD mouse model of diabetes17,18 Thus pancreas rescue or regeneration could not fully account for the persistent and long term HbA1c lowering in humans receiving BCG."
The study didn't include type 2 so we really can't say how this intervention will work on that group; however, I don't see a reason to think it wouldn't be effective in this group.
This is a really interesting study. I've been heavily involved in the past with diabetes mellitus management. This is a novel approach as far as I know. This may revolutionize the approach to treatment for many with diabetes mellitus.
"Our findings show that, at 12 months, almost half of participants achieved remission to a non-diabetic state and off antidiabetic drugs. Remission of type 2 diabetes is a practical target for primary care."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I suspect this might be a flaw in the free market solves all ills school of thought...
You might want to pay more attention to that school of thought. A "free market" is a market with full transparency of information, and no barriers to entry for either sellers or buyers.
Medicine has huge barriers to competition, and buyers have almost no information, since doctors don't post prices and often don't even reveal them at the time of delivery. Buyers also have little ability to compare providers for quality. Even review sites like Yelp tell you far more about the rude receptionist than the outcome of the treatments. Furthermore, the "buyer" is insulated from the price, and usually only pays indirectly through their insurance company.
Healthcare in America is about as far as you can get from a free market. Perhaps this is an area where socialism actually makes sense, but we could do it with no net increase in government by de-socializing tasks the free market can do just fine, like package delivery.
but another company, one that does not make such a drug (especially a company that is a competitor to the first) does have a strong incentive to produce a cure,
This company would make even more money if they just produced a competing drug to manage the disease rather than curing it.
Here are some examples of the best selling diabetes drugs, from different pharma companies. None of them would benefit from a cure.
https://www.pharmaceutical-tec...
I'll try and identify a few of them.
First up: define what a Type 1 diabetic is.
We had this come up some weeks back, when some Scandinavian doctors came up with the conclusion that the several thousand diabetics they studied did not fall neatly into 2 groups ie. Type 1 & 2. Instead they identified some half a dozen groups.
I angrily posted about this at the time because this was known over 20 years ago. What was worse is that I (a diabetic who needs insulin) wasn't covered in their groupings and neither was somebody with gestational diabetes or ....etc.
There's also the problem of what an American doctor diagnoses as a "Type 1" might be somewhat different to what a British or Japanese or Ugandan doctor does. It may even subtly vary among the doctors in just one hospital.
Treatment regimens will vary also: human or analog insulin? Which analog? Short acting, long acting, mix? Pump, pen, syringe? Which pump running what software?
The authors of this paper obviously start with the assumption that all the "Type 1 diabetics" they studied were as a result of this mysterious auto-immune disease, a disease whose pathology or very existence is entirely unclear.
They say in the paper that their cohort had all been diagnosed as "Type 1" as if it's a choice between black or white. It's not, because that term is undefined and in clinical practice covers a significant spectrum of people.
The Machine stops.