Stem cell breakthrough offers hope for diabetics

STEM cells taken from the blood of a few diabetes patients have ‘re-set’ their immune systems, helping 14 out of 15 live for months and even years without insulin, latest research has found.

While they are not claiming to have cured the patients, they said their experiment shows it may be possible to at least interrupt the mistaken immune response that destroys insulin-producing cells in type-1 diabetes.

“It’ll generate controversy and interest and excitement,” Dr Richard Burt of Northwestern University in Chicago, who helped lead the study, said.

Acknowledged as the next major world epidemic by the World Health Organisation, more than 200,000 people in Ireland have diabetes.

Diabetes care takes about 10% of the total health budget, or €350 million, more than half of this (59%) is spent in treating the complications of the disease.

Reports have found that comprehensive and continuous diabetes management has the potential to reduce blindness by 76%, amputation by 67%, cardiovascular disease by 20% and renal disease by 88%.

Type-1 diabetes, also called juvenile diabetes, is often found in children and has different causes from the more common type-2 diabetes that is linked with obesity, poor diet and a lack of exercise.

Type-1 diabetes is an auto-immune disease, caused by the mistaken destruction of the so-called islet cells in the pancreas that create insulin. Patients must almost always take insulin daily to control their blood sugar levels.

Dr Burt’s team chose to work with 15 adults newly diagnosed with type-1 diabetes. Dr Burt said adults can take part in such an experiment with what is known as ‘informed consent’. Dr Burt and Dr Julio Voltarelli of the University of Sao Paulo used drugs to destroy the bone marrow in the patients, in effect, removing their immune systems, they reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“We don’t use those intense regimens they use in cancer. This is a lot less violent to the body — a lot easier to tolerate,” Dr Burt said. They filtered out adult stem cells from the blood of the patients. These adult stem cells, called hemato-poietic stem cells, give rise to the white blood immune system cells.

“Ninety-three percent of patients achieved different periods of insulin independence and treatment-related toxicity was low, with no mortality,” they wrote in their report.

Dr Burt believes the treatment has re-set the immune systems of the patients, stopping, at least temporarily, the onslaught on the pancreatic islet cells and allowing some of them to regenerate and produce insulin.

Burt and colleagues said 14 patients became insulin-free — one for nearly three years, four for two years and others for at least several months.