Doctors, patients describe diabetes breakthrough (Canada)
WebPosted Tue Jun 6 23:12:58 2000
http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2000/06/06/diabetes000606
EDMONTON - The University of Alberta celebrated a success on Tuesday. A
year ago, eight diabetics were injected with cells from human
pancreases. Today their disease is gone.
Dr. John Shapiro, one of the research leaders summed up the test. "It
works for everybody. It has a 100 per cent success."
The procedure, called the Edmonton Protocol, isn't a cure. But for Ron
Forbes of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, the elusive cure now seems
within reach. "We're not there yet. This is just a start, but we feel
very comfortable that a cure is much closer than ever before."
For the eight patients it's a life-changing experience. No more insulin.
No more worries about blood sugar.
Shapiro, along with Dr. Ray Rajotte and Dr. Jonathan Lakey led the
research team from the U of A. Their results were initially presented in
Chicago at a meeting of transplant surgeons last month.
The research team succeeded in taking the patients - all of them severe
diabetics - off their daily insulin injection. Now the hope is that
millions of other chronic diabetics worldwide won't need shots anymore.
Diabetes leaves the body unable to produce its own insulin, a hormone
that regulates sugar in the blood. Chronic (Type 1) diabetics must
inject themselves daily with insulin.
Researchers successfully transplanted human pancreatic cells, which
produce insulin, into patients from Alberta, Saskatchewan and
Yellowknife. All of them needed up to 15 self-injected insulin shots a
day before the study.
Since then, none of them have needed insulin injections and they don't
need to monitor their diet anymore.
They do have to take a drug cocktail so their bodies don't reject the
new cells. And no one's sure what the long-term side effects are.
Diabetics won't be able to access the treatment immediately because
there's a shortage of donated organs that supply the cells for the
procedure.
Doctors in Europe and across North America will now take part in a
large-scale trial.
Almost 200,000 Canadians have insulin-dependent diabetes, a condition
that's one of the leading causes of death. People with diabetes have an
increased risk of developing heart disease, stroke, kidney disease and
blindness.
In 1995, an estimated 135 million people around the world had diabetes.
The World Health Organization estimates that number will reach 300
million by 2025.
Links:
•Canadian Diabetes Association
http://www.diabetes.ca/
•Health Canada diabetes information
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hpb/lcdc/publicat/diabet99/pdfind_e.html
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