Stem Cells and Diabetes
The news that stem cell transplants into sufferer of Type 1 diabetes have allowed patients to forego their traditional daily insulin injections has come following research that allowed volunteers to successfully go an average of two-and-a-half years free from needing to take their multiple, daily injections with which they usually manage their condition thanks to stem cell therapy. The small study that was undertaken included 23 patients that had been recently diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is a condition where a person’s immune system can very quickly destroy the cells that produce insulin found in the pancreas.
The stem cell transplants appear to work by effectively re-setting the immune system on order that the body will cease attacking the pancreas. According to the researchers involved in the study such a treatment can only successfully be undertaken when Type 1 diabetes is caught early in a patient, preferably within a six week window following diagnosis and before the pancreas suffers irreparable damage and before any complications set in as a result of elevated blood sugar levels.
With regards to the study itself 23 patients received stem cell treatments in order to treat new-onset cases of type 1 diabetes, making use of follow-up data from 15 patients that initially received stem cell implants in a study previously published in 2007 combined with another eight patients that joined the study all the way up until April 2008. The patients involved in the study were aged between 13 and 31 years old with an average age of just over 18. The majority of the patients were men who had suffered for a relatively short duration from the disease before it was caught (around 37 days on average) and were, in general, free of diabetic ketoacidosis – a condition that is dangerous complication linked to Type 1 diabetes.
The new study has hinted at possible new avenues for research, although it must be stressed that the treatment is still at an early stage of its development and it is not without certain risks and side effects. In fact the research director of Diabetes UK, Dr Iain Frame, has been quick to stress that “This treatment is not a cure for type 1 diabetes.”
The researchers obtained follow-up data on all of the 23 patients that were in receipt of a stem cell therapy transplant and the length of their data collation for each patient ranged from seven to fifty-eight months. Their findings showed that 20 patients, all with no previous ketoacidosis, became insulin and injection free, and of all involved a total of twelve patients stayed insulin-free for an average of thirty-one months. Eight patients, however, suffered relapses and needed to resume taking insulin at low doses.
While the results from this study indicate that further research definitely needs to be done into the process as well as highlights the fact that there will undoubtedly need to be further work done among people of different ethnicities and among women in order to further test the findings of the study it nevertheless shows promise for many Type 1 diabetes sufferers.
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