New Hope for Type 1 Diabetes Cure

I've been afflicted with diabetes for some time now. It has affected my vision as well as my kidneys. Even with that I'm lucky because in some people diabetes can cause amputation, kidney failure, and blindness.

There are two different types of diabetes: Type 1 diabetes usually occurs in younger people and is where the immune system attacks the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, destroying them.

Type 2 diabetes is what I like to call "lifestyle diabetes" because being overweight and eating a poor diet can contribute to getting it. Because of the American diet, a lot more people are getting Type 2 diabetes at a younger and younger age. At the rate we are going it has been forecast that 50 percent of all Americans will have some type of diabetes by the year 2030.

Diabetes is a dreadful disease, especially if you don't control it. But now there is a tiny glimmer of hope on the horizon for reversing Type 1 diabetes. And this type is the one that affects the part of the population that is most vulnerable: the children.

According to the St. Louis Post Dispatch: Preliminary experiments in a handful of people suggest that it might be possible to reverse Type 1 diabetes using an inexpensive vaccine to stop the immune system from attacking cells in the pancreas.

Believe it or not, the vaccine that we are talking about is the eighty-year-old tuberculosis vaccine. The key player in all of this is a protein called "tissue necrosis factor." The vaccine causes levels of TNF in the blood to increase allowing the regrowth of the insulin producing cells. And what's even better yet is that some studies have suggested that the cells can increase even when they have been gone for years in long term Type 1 diabetes.

A researcher by the name of Dr. Denise Faustman first reported similar findings way back in 2001 at the Massachusetts General Hospital, but it was met by such skepticism by other researchers that it has taken until now before any serious research has been done. And that's way too long.

Long-term studies are now taking place with a larger group of humans, so let's hope that it won't take another ten years before this can be put to use. Maybe in the future kids won't have to test their blood sugar several times a day, take painful injections, and face a future that is uncertain as far as their health is concerned. That's if it works, of course.

Source: http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/article_06b7f694-1bd9-5d5c-8c5a-79804fb88f6d.html