The Past Year Has Brought Many Discoveries In The Study Of Diabetes

The Past Year Has Brought Many Discoveries In The Study Of Diabetes.
Even as the omen of diabetes continues to grow, scientists have made significant discoveries in the over year that might one broad daylight lead to ways to stop the blood sugar plague in its tracks. That's some good news as World Diabetes Day is observed this Sunday. Created in 1991 as a dive project between the International Diabetes Federation and the World Health Organization to bring about more attention to the public health threat of diabetes, World Diabetes Day was officially recognized by the United Nations in 2007.

One of the more intoxicating findings in type 1 diabetes research this year came from the lab of Dr Pere Santamaria at University of Calgary, where researchers developed a vaccine that successfully reversed diabetes in mice. What's more, the vaccine was able to quarry only those vaccinated cells that were top for destroying the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. "The hope is that this work will translate to humans," said Dr Richard Insel, manager scientific officer for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. "And what's rousing is that they've opened up some pathways we didn't even know were there".

The other avenue of sort 1 research that Insel said has progressed significantly this year is in beta chamber function. Pedro Herrera, at the University of Geneva Medical School, and his team found that the adult pancreas can literally regenerate alpha cells into functioning beta cells. Other researchers, according to Insel, have been able to reprogram other cells in the body into beta cells, such as the acinar cells in the pancreas and cells in the liver.

This category of stall manipulation is called reprogramming, a different and less complex process than creating induced pluripotent quell cells, so there are fewer potential problems with the process. Another exciting development that came to consummation this past year was in type 1 diabetes management. The first closed wind artificial pancreas system was officially tested, and while there's still a long way to go in the regulatory process, Insel said there have been "very positive results".

Unfortunately, not all diabetes news this past year was encomiastic news. One of the biggest stories in type 2 diabetes was the US Food and Drug Administration's firmness to restrict the sale of the type 2 diabetes medication rosiglitazone (Avandia) into the middle concerns that the drug might increase the risk of cardiovascular complications. The manufacturer of Avandia, GlaxoSmithKline, was also ordered to get an unlimited review of clinical trials run by the company.

The Wounded Soldier Was Saved From The Acquisition Of Diabetes Through An Emergency Transplantation Of Cells

The Wounded Soldier Was Saved From The Acquisition Of Diabetes Through An Emergency Transplantation Of Cells.
In the word go handling of its kind, a wounded enlisted man whose damaged pancreas had to be removed was able to have his own insulin-producing islet cells transplanted back into him, careful him from a life with the most severe form of type 1 diabetes. In November 2009, 21-year-old Senior Airman Tre Porfirio was serving in a small square of Afghanistan when an insurgent who had been pretending to be a soldier in the Afghan army shot him three times at devoted range with a high-velocity rifle.

After undergoing two surgeries in the field to stop the bleeding, Porfirio was transferred to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC As part company of the surgery in the field, a platter of Porfirio's stomach, the gallbladder, the duodenum, and a section of his pancreas had been removed. At Walter Reed, surgeons expected that they would be reconstructing the structures in the abdomen that had been damaged.

However, they hurriedly discovered that the uneaten portion of the pancreas was leaking pancreatic enzymes that were dissolving parts of other organs and blood vessels, according to their story in the April 22 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. "When I went into surgery with Tre, my end was to reconnect everything, but I discovered a very dire, iffy situation," said Dr Craig Shriver, Walter Reed's chief of broad surgery.

So "I knew I would now have to remove the remainder of his pancreas, but I also knew that leads to a life-threatening trim of diabetes. The pancreas makes insulin and glucagon, which take out the extremes of very gamy and very low blood sugar". Because he didn't want to leave this soldier with this life-threatening condition, Shriver consulted with his Walter Reed colleague, shift surgeon Dr Rahul Jindal.

Jindal said that Porfirio could gross a pancreas transplant from a matched donor at a later date, but that would lack lifelong use of immune-suppressing medications. Another option was a transplant using Porfirio's own islet cells - cells within the pancreas that give birth to insulin and glucagon. The procedure is known as autologous islet chamber transplantion.