Top Document: diabetes FAQ: treatment (part 3 of 5) Previous Document: Insulin pumps Next Document: Type 1 cures -- pancreas transplants See reader questions & answers on this topic! - Help others by sharing your knowledge Beta cells can be isolated and implanted, requiring only outpatient surgery for implantation. But foreign beta cells are quickly rejected without immunosuppressant drugs. Even with the recent advances in drugs, especially cyclosporin, using immunosuppressants is much more dangerous than living with diabetes. As a result, beta cell implantation is not currently used to treat diabetes. Current research is investigating two general methods of implanting beta cells without the use of immunosuppressant drugs. The first (immunoisolation) encapsulates the beta cells within a barrier so that nutrients, glucose, and insulin can pass freely through the barrier but the proteins which provoke the immune response, and the cells which respond, cannot pass. The second (immunoalteration) involves altering the proteins on the surface of the cells which provoke the immune response. The first human trial began early in 1993 on immunoisolated beta cells, and human trials were scheduled to begin late in 1993 on immunoaltered beta cells. (As of early 1997, I haven't had the opportunity to try to locate the followup to these trials.) An article in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, September 1996, describes a successful experiment which implanted immunoisolated porcine (pig) islets into monkeys. An accompanying editorial describes the state of islet transplantation. Both are online in full, linked from the issue contents page at http://www.jci.org/content/vol98/issue6/ In early 2000, a lot of hype appeared about the "Edmonton protocol" trials. While an important step, this is still only a small step on a long journey. They made improvements in technique and graft survival, but no progress on the serious problems of beta cell supply (each patient needed beta cells from two cadaver donors) or of immunosuppressant use (they used drugs, albeit carefully). Don't expect these treatments to be available on a standard basis any time soon. I've been reading about this research since the mid-1970s, and the results are always just around the corner. Serious problems remain to be solved: safety of the immunoisolated implants, long-term survival, ability to use beta cells from non-human species or grow usable cells for grafting in the laboratory, perfection of both techniques -- all these must be resolved before beta cell implantation moves beyond the experimental stage. Other problems will likely be encountered along the way, since this is cutting edge medical research. I'll be surprised if it gets out of the lab before the year 2005; 2015 is probably a better guess. And it may fail -- it's always possible that unsolvable problems will yet arise. Finally, it's not yet clear that even completely normal bG profiles will cure all the problems of type 1 diabetes. Some may be related to the autoimmune reaction that is the immediate cause of diabetes. This question cannot be answered until it is possible to normalize bG levels for a period of many years. User Contributions:Comment about this article, ask questions, or add new information about this topic:Top Document: diabetes FAQ: treatment (part 3 of 5) Previous Document: Insulin pumps Next Document: Type 1 cures -- pancreas transplants Part1 - Part2 - Part3 - Part4 - Part5 - Single Page [ Usenet FAQs | Web FAQs | Documents | RFC Index ] Send corrections/additions to the FAQ Maintainer: edward@paleo.org
Last Update March 27 2014 @ 02:11 PM
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between and mg/dl and mmol/l is, i came across your article and was so pleased to aquire a lot more info regarding blood glucose, how to read and convert it.