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Hi All, I read this news in the Canadian papers today and thought "Wow! This is fantastic. If they can do this for diabetes maybe soon we People With Parkinson's will get a *breakthrough*!" I live for this stuff! ............... murray I went on the web and found the story at: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/stories1/000518/4124554.html Thursday 18 May 2000 U of A team beats diabetes Eight diabetics have not needed insulin shots since islet cell transplant Andy Ogle, Journal Staff Writer The Edmonton Journal A University of Alberta research team has produced a diabetes breakthrough that has already freed eight people from their daily insulin injections for an average of 11 months. The team, led by Dr. Ray Rajotte and including transplant surgeon James Shapiro, Dr. Jonathan Lakey and Dr. Greg Korbutt, injected insulin-producing cells from donor pancreases into the eight patients, aged 29 to 53. Such a procedure has been tried before by doctors in other countries but this marks the first time patients have been completely freed from insulin injections. Shapiro told a meeting of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons and the American Transplantation Society in Chicago this week that the patients have all done well since their islet- cell transplants. They continue to show no signs of damage from high blood sugar. All the patients have had diabetes since childhood and were selected for the procedure because they had difficulty controlling their blood sugar with insulin injections. The needed up to 15 injections a day and lived under the constant threat of blackouts. Shapiro said a new immune-suppression drug called Rapa mune, which became available in the United States last year, was crucial to the new treatment. It can be given in low doses and does not appear to have some of the side effects of most immune suppressants. Joanne Langner of the Alberta Foundation for Diabetes Research, which has provided $1.8 million for the islet-cell transplant trial, said the results are amazing. "This is extremely exciting for diabetics everywhere," Langner said. "There's a definite improvement in the quality of life for these individuals." Langner said she's met most of the patients and all have told her the best thing is being able to live normal lives. "Even being able to sleep in late is a novel experience for them," she said. Neither Shapiro, who is still out of the country, nor his colleagues in Edmonton were available on Wednesday. They have a paper ready to be published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, which traditionally imposes a strict news blackout on anything it publishes until the day of publication. But word of the talk in Chicago by Shapiro, who is originally from England, leaked out in the British press Wednesday. The U of A medical faculty fielded calls all day Wednesday from diabetic patients from Britain seeking more information on the new treatment. The actual transplant is about a 15-minute, day-surgery procedure involving injection of the cells into the portal vein, the main vein connected to the liver. The cells migrate to the liver where, even though they are in a different organ, they take root and produce sufficient insulin to meet the patients' needs. Unfortunately, said Langner, the treatment won't be available to many patients right away because the treatment relies on organ donation. It takes two donor pancreas to supply enough islet cells for one transplant procedure. *************************************************************************************************** [log in to unmask]