Scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital report they may be on the trail of a cure for diabetes. Hundreds of scientists have been searching for a cure and or better treatment for diabetes for over 50 years. Dr. Faustman, a research scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital says they have cured diabetes in mice and believe they may be uncovering the secrets of diabetes that may lead to a permanent cure in humans. Such a cure would relieve suffering for hundreds of millions worldwide. There are approximately 23 million diagnosed diabetics in North America and 73.3 million people at high risk that are overweight and many are already pre-diabetic or insulin resistant. The worldwide estimate is a staggering 300 million diagnosed cases.

Until a cure is found, the best treatment and or prevention is good dietary practice and a healthy lifestyle.

To read the Press release from MGH click the read more link below.

The MGH research team has considerable evidence that this T cell defect found in diabetic mice is physiologically identical to that found in diabetic humans. Defective T cells were in all of the 100 Type 1 diabetic patients that have been screened to date and none of the healthy control subjects. Furthermore, the severity of the T cell defect seems to be directly proportional to the age of diabetes onset. The younger the patient, the greater degree of T cell defect.

The next step in this research is to develop a laboratory assay for rapid and accurate analysis of defective cells in patient blood samples, suitable for use in a clinical study. This assay will enable physicians to identify patients who are likely to benefit from the treatment and can also be used to provide evidence of the success of the treatment. This step will be accomplished through the collaboration of Dr. Faustman with Dr. David Nathan, an internationally recognized clinician and clinical investigator in the field of diabetes.

In a second major breakthrough, another team of MGH researchers led by Dr. Joel Habener, announced their exciting discovery of stem cells within the pancreatic islets in March 2001. This discovery is of vital importance for the cure of long term Type 1 diabetes (when the natural supply of pancreatic stem cells may have died out) and is also likely to benefit those with Type 2 diabetes. Stem cells are immature cells that can proliferate indefinitely and provide a source of cells that can mature into many cell types, including beta cells, a normal process that replaces cells that have naturally died out. Other research suggests that these stem cells may survive in the pancreas for some years after the onset of frank insulin dependency, still maturing into beta cells only to be immediately destroyed by autoreactive T cells.

Thus, if the autoimmunity is eliminated, as in the mice experiments, the patients may cure themselves with the residual beta stem cells. In many diabetic patients, however, all of the pancreatic stem cells may have been used up after only 3-5 years of disease. Thus, beta cell replacement therapies are likely to be required for the cure of the vast majority of established Type 1 diabetic patients. Pancreatic islet transplantation is one possible therapy but it is widely appreciated that the supply of human islets for transplantation will never meet the existing need. In addition, after islet transplantation, the patients need to take immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection throughout their life. An alternative therapy is to transplant beta cells. In this case, the cells surface can be treated to prevent rejection (another major discovery from Dr. Faustman's laboratory) and no immunosuppression is necessary