Friday, December 15, 2006

reversing diabetes

Researchers reverse diabetes in mice Reuters via Yahoo!News 12/15/06 "Defective nerve endings may attract immune system proteins that mistakenly attack the pancreas, destroying its ability to make insulin, the researchers said. This destruction is what causes diabetes...Injecting a piece of protein, or peptide, to repair the defect cured diabetic mice "overnight," Dr. Hans Michael Dosch of the University of Toronto said... The team will soon begin clinical studies on people whose family history suggests they are at risk of developing type-1 diabetes to see if their sensory nerves work well...If they do not, Dosch said, that would suggest the bad nerve endings were a cause of diabetes, not only an effect as has been widely assumed...Trials could then begin injecting peptides into patients with diabetes or those at high risk. It could take a number of years, Dosch said.
He said the findings might also hold promise for type-2 diabetes -- which affects about 10 times as many people as type-1 -- though the results were not as strong"


Very encouraging news for type-1 diabetes and possibly for type-2. There's more in the article about implications of the research for type-2 diabetes.

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