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.

Comments

Re:Too bad the Republicans will never let us have

[greenwow]

Or maybe scientists and researchers should have some ethics to make sure their studies are valid and repeatable before pushing claims?

Big Pharma might not allow it

[emaname]

It strikes me as though there is a large number of oral medications and injectables all geared toward "managing" diabetes. That's a lot of revenue for somebody. Now to have something that (if it's true) can reduce the need for diabetic medications seems like it would make those drug manufacturers very unhappy.

Re:Big Pharma might not allow it

[Baloroth]

I suspect this might be a flaw in the free market solves all ills school of thought

But this is also a problem that can be solved by the free market. See, a pharma maker with a drug that manages a disease (rather than curing it) may not be inclined to produce a drug that could cure said disease, 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, as not only would it make them a large amount of money (even if for a short period of time), it would undermine the revenue stream of the competing company, a win for them. Note that this requires the market to actually be free. Collusion between companies can prevent it from happening, because then it ceases to be a free market (note that this does mean a free market requires some government intervention at times).

This is why all the conspiracy theories about researches not actually wanting to find a cure for cancer make no sense. Aside from the fact that researchers themselves have ethical incentives to find a cure (not to mention reputational: there is, after all, a Nobel prize in medicine, and a cure for cancer would be a guaranteed shoe-in), and of course the fact that cures for plenty of other diseases have been (and continue to be) developed (which shows that pharma companies really do still put out cures), the company that discovers a cure for cancer would make all the money in cancer treatment, not just some of it, and for quite a long time, and would completely decimate their competitors. Plus ongoing money, since cancer would still occur and need curing (in fact, they could probably end up making even more money in the long run, since people surving cancer means they're more likely to develop another cancer in the future)

Re:Too bad the Republicans will never let us have

[thegarbz]

Or maybe scientists and researchers should have some ethics to make sure their studies are valid and repeatable before pushing claims?

Scientists don't publish claims, they publish results. The media publishes claims.