Slashdot Mirror
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.
Or maybe scientists and researchers should have some ethics to make sure their studies are valid and repeatable before pushing claims?
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.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
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.
There probably are several new medicines that will cure or alleviate symptoms for all manner of things developed each month. Sometimes the news is a bit premature as the drug hasn't even been tried in humans yet. Once further testing is done some of these are found to cause all manner of nasty side effects, some worse than what they cure. Sometimes the FDA approves it anyhow if the side effects don't appear to be life threatening, even as off-putting as they may be.
The article suggests that it might
The article does not say that. There is no plausible mechanism for this to work on type 2.
The sample size in the study (12 people, 9 getting the treatment, and 3 in the control group, and only 3 receiving the treatment were followed for the full duration) is so small, that it is not even clear if it works on type 1.
"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."
Found the moron in the discussion. The study that claimed that was for one specific vaccine, the primary author had an alternate vaccine coming out a few months later he claimed was better and his PhD was by now removed because the study was completely fraudulent. Look it up. No, vaccines do not cause autism.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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.
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.
"BCG is pretty much useless for TB, but they still give it out to everyone in the philippines."
So Type 1 diabetes is pretty much unknown in the Philippines?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey