An announcement made at the 75th Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association rejoice the many with a vaccine found to treat type 1 diabetes.
According to Healthy and Natural House, the announcement said that the FDA will test 150 people with advanced stage of type 1 diabetes.
Approximately, there are 1.25 million Americans suffer from type 1 diabetes and it remains the 7th leading cause of death in the United States, with a total of 234,051 death certificates listing diabetes as an underlying or contributing cause of death.
Type 1 diabetes is a form of diabetes mellitus in which not enough insulin is produced. When a body of a person with type 1 diabetes does not produce insulin, blood sugar levels will increase. The immune system’s T-cell destroys the inlets of the pancreas where the insulin-producing beta cells are present.
A person suffering from type 1 diabetes will experience extreme thirst, frequent urination, drowsiness or lethargy, sudden weight loss, sudden change in vision, sugar in the urine, fruity breath odor, heavy or labored breathing and unconsciousness.
The vaccine came from bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) which is used to treat tuberculosis. It works to eliminate T-cells in the body, giving the pancreas to reproduce insulin again on their own.
Increased tumor necrosis factor are seen to patients with diabetes after they were vaccinated. The tumor necrosis factor or TNF destroys the T-cells that hinders the production of insulin.
“In the preliminary phase trial, we demonstrated a statistically significant response to BCG, but our goal is to create a lasting therapeutic response. We will be working again with people with type 1 diabetes for a long time. This is not a prevention trial but rather we are trying to create a regiment that will treat even advanced disease” Dr. Denise Faustman, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Immunobiology Laboratory in Boston.
Aside from these, another research has been conducted in Ireland that converts stem cells into beta cells.
Per Diabetes Ireland, the new method for converting stem cells to beta cells could speed encapsulated cell replacement product development and research to cure type 1 diabetes. These brings new hope that more effective and alternative treatments may be possible.
Based on the findings reported in the scientific journal Cell, the development of this new method was authored by Harvard University researcher Doug Melton, Ph.D. and are being supported by Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF).
“This significant accomplishment has the potential to serve as a cell source for the islet replacement in people with type 1 diabetes when used in encapsulated cell-replacement products. It may also provide a source for discovery of therapies to promote survival or regeneration of beta cells and development of screening biomarkers to monitor beta cell health and survival” JDRF Chief Scientific Officer Richard A. Insel, M.D.
Source: LatinosHealth , AFP
