Hope for type 1 diabetes cure

[T_Dia]

Researchers are a step closer to a cure for type 1 diabetes after the successful transplantation of insulin-producing cells into eight patients.

The breakthrough gives hope to the 140,000 Australians, who survive on daily insulin injections.

Wayne Hawthorne, from the national pancreas and islet transplant unit at Westmead Hospital, said the experimental procedure might soon be a real option for everyone with type 1 diabetes, including children.

Scientists transplanted the insulin-producing islet cells from a donor pancreas into the patients' livers, where they began to produce insulin.

In people who have type 1 diabetes, the body's immune system malfunctions, producing an auto-immune response that destroys these cells.

After one treatment, the amount of insulin the patients needed to control blood glucose levels was dramatically reduced, in some cases to zero.

Mike Wilson, the chief executive of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in Australia, said the treatment effectively reversed diabetes.

"This is an incredibly exciting step forward for both the type 1 diabetes community and for the world-class Australian researchers who are rapidly advancing in this area," he said.

Only patients with brittle (unstable) diabetes, where blood sugar drops dramatically without warning, have been treated so far, but Dr Hawthorne said the aim was to treat everyone with the disease.

However, he said low organ donation rates meant islet transplants would remain out of reach unless another way to source the cells was found.

Fewer than 90 pancreases become available a year for this type of operation in Australia but more than 2000 people are newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Xenotransplantation, where animal cells are transplanted into humans, is an option being investigated.

Last month scientists in the United States turned stem cells into insulin producers that responded to blood glucose levels.

Islet cell transplants have been reliable and viable only in the past few years because there have been major scientific advances.

About 200 patients worldwide have been treated, with 80 per cent of them not needing insulin injections 12 months later.

However, patients need potentially toxic immuno-suppressant drugs so their bodies do not reject the new cells, and the drugs have serious side effects that for some people are worse than the disease.

Last week collaborating researchers at St Vincent's Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne announced the successful transplantation of insulin-producing islet cells into a Victorian woman.

Elaine Robinson, 54, no longer sufferers from life-threatening hypoglycaemic attacks and needs to inject only a small fraction of the amount of insulin she was using previously.

A planned second transplant could eliminate the need for insulin completely.
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