A Patent Was Just Granted To What Could Be A Potential Cure For Type 1 Diabetes

Type I diabetes is a chronic condition which usually develops in childhood. Otherwise known as juvenile diabetes, it occurs when the pancreas produces little or no insulin, a hormone which allows sugar (glucose) to enter the cells to produce energy. Type I diabetes differs significantly from the increasingly common type II diabetes, which used to be known as adult onset diabetes, occurring when the body becomes resistant to or fails to produce enough insulin.
While research suggests that type II diabetes may be reversible through dietary changes, type I still has researchers confounded. As Science Alert explains, diabetes “involves the loss of functioning beta cells in the pancreas: either these cells die (type I diabetes) or they don’t do as they’re told (type II diabetes)” and while “scientists have been trying to replace these damaged or dead beta cells with healthy ones,” those cells are always destroyed by the patient’s own immune system.
There Is Hope
Fortunately a US patent has just been approved for what could be the first functional cure for type I diabetes. This involves combining cells that deliver insulin with a technology that allows them to hide from the immune system – for years at a time. Called ‘Melligan cells,’ they can produce, store, and release insulin according to the levels of human blood sugars.
Scientists from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) have been genetically engineering these cells over the past several years to function in the same way that beta cells would in non-diabetics, releasing insulin in response to blood Continue reading

Rate this article

Total 1 ratings

Foods to Avoid to Help Prevent Diabetes

We’ve known that being overweight and obese are important risk factors for type 2 diabetes, but, until recently, not much attention has been paid to the role of specific foods. I discuss this issue in my video, Why Is Meat a Risk Factor for Diabetes?
A 2013 meta-analysis of all the cohorts looking at the connection between meat and diabetes found a significantly higher risk associated with total meat consumption––especially consumption of processed meat, particularly poultry. But why? There’s a whole list of potential culprits in meat: saturated fat, animal fat, trans fats naturally found in meat, cholesterol, or animal protein. It could be the heme iron found in meat, which can lead to free radicals and iron-induced oxidative stress that may lead to chronic inflammation and type 2 diabetes, or advanced glycation end (AGE) products, which promote oxidative stress and inflammation. Food analyses show that the highest levels of these so-called glycotoxins are found in meat—particularly roasted, fried, or broiled meat, though any foods from animal sources (and even high fat and protein plant foods such as nuts) exposed to high dry temperatures can be potent sources of these pro-oxidant chemicals.
In another study, researchers fed diabetics glycotoxin-packed foods, like chicken, fish, and eggs, and their inflammatory markers––tumor necrosis factor, C-reactive protein, and vascular adhesion molecules––shot up. “Thus, in diabetes, environmental (dietary) AGEs promote inflammatory mediators, leading to tissue injury.” The good news is that restriction of thes Continue reading

New hope for human patients as scientists reverse type 1 diabetes in mice

Get short URL
A team of scientists from Boston Children's Hospital have reversed type 1 diabetes in mice, leading to hopes that human sufferers of the autoimmune condition may soon be treated using a similar method.
Hospital researchers said that all of the mice trialled were successfully cured of type 1 in the short term, while around one-third were cured for the duration of their lives. Previous studies have tried to cure the condition using immunotherapy.
Patients in those studies were infused with their own blood stem cells, in an attempt to reboot their immune system. However, Boston researchers discovered that a genetic defect, which causes the blood stem cells to produce less of a protein called PD-L1, contributes to so-called juvenile diabetes.
“We found that in diabetes, blood stem cells are defective, promoting inflammation and possibly leading to the onset of disease,” senior researcher Paolo Fiorina said in a statement.
To combat the defective gene, the team replaced it with healthy genes and used a harmless virus as a carrier, they found that the treated cells reversed diabetes in the tested mice. “We think resolution of PD-L1 deficiency may provide a novel therapeutic tool for the disease,” study author Ben Nasr said.
More research is now needed to determine how long the treatment would last in humans but scientists are hopeful as there weren’t any adverse effects of treatment on the mice. “The beauty of this approach is the virtual lack of any adverse effects, since it would use the patient's’ own cells,” Fiorina said.
The research was publish Continue reading

Vaccine Information for Adults

Each year thousands of adults in the United States get sick from diseases that could be prevented by vaccines — some people are hospitalized, and some even die. People with diabetes (both type 1 and type 2) are at higher risk for serious problems from certain vaccine-preventable diseases. Getting vaccinated is an important step in staying healthy. If you have diabetes, talk with your doctor about getting your vaccinations up-to-date.
Why Vaccines are Important for You
Diabetes, even if well managed, can make it harder for your immune system to fight infections, so you may be at risk for more serious complications from an illness compared to people without diabetes.
Some illnesses, like influenza, can raise your blood glucose to dangerously high levels.
People with diabetes have higher rates of hepatitis B than the rest of the population. Outbreaks of hepatitis B associated with blood glucose monitoring procedures have happened among people with diabetes.
People with diabetes are at increased risk for death from pneumonia (lung infection), bacteremia (blood infection) and meningitis (infection of the lining of the brain and spinal cord).
Immunization provides the best protection against vaccine-preventable diseases.
Vaccines are one of the safest ways for you to protect your health, even if you are taking prescription medications. Vaccine side effects are usually mild and go away on their own. Severe side effects are very rare.
Vaccines You Need
There may be other vaccines recommended for you based on your lifestyle, travel habits, and other factors. Take the Adult Vaccine Continue reading

Study: More Black Tea, Less Diabetes

Green tea this, and green tea that, but black still accounts for 90 percent of tea sold in Western countries. Is it doing anything for us?
PROBLEM: Green tea has a lot of simple flavonoids called catechins. They're what's most implicated when we read about green tea improving/preventing diseases. When tea oxidizes and becomes black, the types of ﬂavonoids change. There are fewer simple catechins and more complex theaﬂavins and thearubigins. (Real words, I promise. I think the people who came up with them read a lot of Tolkien.) These complex flavonoids haven't been studied as much.
METHODOLOGY: Researchers in Geneva, London, and Paris compared black tea consumption with data from the World Health Survey on respiratory and infectious diseases, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes in 50 countries.
RESULTS: "The black tea vector was negatively correlated with the diabetes vector -- and was not correlated with any of the other four health indicators."
CONCLUSION: Places where people drink more black tea have significantly lower rates of type 2 diabetes.
Is it because of the black tea? Given the biochemical effects of flavonoids on the pancreas suggested by previous research (protecting/regenerating pancreatic beta cells, which can be depleted in type 2 diabetes), it could be. Other research hasn't found flavonoids to be protective against insulin resistance, though. So, we need more info.
Black tea consumption didn't seem to be related to any of the other aforementioned badness (respiratory, cardiovascular, or infectious diseases; or cancer).
IMPLICATION: Wes Continue reading