Stem cells may end diabetes jabs
WASHINGTON: Diabetes using stem-cells therapy have been able to stop taking insulin injections for the first time, after their bodies started to produced the hormone naturally again.
In a breakthrough trial, 15 young patients with newly diagnosed Type 1 diabetes were given drugs to suppress their immune systems, followed by transfusions of stem cells drawn from their own blood.
The results show that insulin dependent diabetics can be freed from reliance on needles by an injection of their own stem cells. The therapy could signal a revolution in the treatment of common condition, which affects millions.
People with Type 1 diabetes have to give themselves regular injections to control blood sugar levels, as their ability to create the hormone naturally is destroyed by immune disorder.
All but two of the volunteers in the trials, details of which were published yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, did not need daily insulin injections up to three years after stopping their treatment regimes.
The findings were released yesterday as the future of US stem-cell research was being debated in Washington.
Stem cells are immature, unprogrammed cells that have the ability to grow into different kind of tissue and can be sourced from people of all ages.
Previous study has suggested that stem-cells therapies offer huge potential to treat a variety of diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and motor neuron disease.
A study by British scientists in November also reported that stem-cell injections could repair organ damage in heart attack victims.
But research using the most versatile kind of stem cells – those acquired from human embryos – is currently opposed by powerful critics, including US President George W. Bush.
The journal’s study provides the first clinical evidence for the efficacy of stem cells in Type 1 diabetes. Sufferers of the chronic condition, which normally emerged in childhood or early adulthood, have to inject themselves at least four times a day.
Type 2 diabetes, which usually affects people later in life, is linked to a lifestyle factors. There are almost 2 million Type 2 diabetics in Britain, most of whom control their blood-sugar levels with pills or through diet.
The new study, by a joint team of Brazilian and American scientists, fount that one of the patients to undergo the procedure had not used any supplemental synthetic insulin for three years.
“Very encouraging results were obtained in a small number of patients with early-on-set disease,” wrote the authors, led by Julio Voltarelli, from the University of Sao Paulo in Ribeirao Preto, Brazil. “Ninety-three per cent of patients achieved different periods of insulin independences and treatment-related toxicity was low, with no mortality.”
“It will probably be five to eight years before we see a treatment being available,” said Richard Burt, a co-author of the study from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
Reference from : New Straits Times
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