Category Archives: Diabetes

Published November 25, 2014

A commonly prescribed muscle relaxant may help treat a rare form of diabetes, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have found.

According to a news release, the drug dantrolene halts the destruction of insulin-producing beta cells in animal models of the disease and in cell models drawn from people who have the illness.

Patients who have the disease, called Wolfram syndrome, usually develop Type 1 diabetes at a young age and must receive multiple daily insulin injections. Diabetes disables the body from producing and properly using insulin, a hormone that helps convert sugar into energy for normal body function, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This effect causes sugar to build up in the blood, which can lead to heart disease, kidney failure and other serious health problems.

In addition to Type 1 diabetes, patients with Wolfram syndrome also have difficulty with balance and hearing and vision loss. One in 500,000 people have Wolfram syndrome, and many patients die by age 40.

During their study, researchers discovered that high levels of the enzyme calpain 2 were the main cause of death in brain cells and insulin-producing cells. Dantrolene, the muscle relaxant, blocked that enzyme and prevented brain cell death in the animals and human-derived models.

Researchers studied the effects of dantrolene on stem cells from Wolfram syndrome patients and their close relatives. The stem cells were grown from skin cells, rather than gathered from cord blood or stem cells developed from embryos. According to the news release, the study authors treated the stem cells in growth factors so they would differentiate into specific cell types, such as neurons and insulin-producing cells. They found that dantrolene wasnt toxic to cells grown from the skin samples of patients relatives.

The drug interfered with cell death in cells from Wolfram patients but did not harm cells that came from parents and siblings, senior investigator Fumihiko Urano, a medicine professor at Washington University, said in the news release.

Dantrolene is often prescribed to patients with multiple sclerosis as a treatment for muscle spasticity. The drug has already been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), so researchers hope to begin clinical trials quickly.

Wed like to test the drug first in adult patients with Wolfram syndrome, and if we get positive results, we could extend the trial to children, Urano said.

Continue reading here:
Muscle relaxant may treat rare form of diabetes, scientists find

Did Scientists Just Cure Type 1 Diabetes?
The Telegraph #39;s Sarah Knapton reports that scientists at Harvard University have discovered how to use stem-cells to manufacture insulin-producing cells, pav...

By: Secular Talk

See the rest here:
Did Scientists Just Cure Type 1 Diabetes? - Video

Major step toward diabetes cure
Researchers at Harvard say they were able to produce cells that make insulin from embryonic stem cells, which could be a major breakthrough in the treatment ...

By: CBSNews.com Web Extras

More here:
Major step toward diabetes cure - Video

By Alan Mozes HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Oct. 9, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- In what may be a step toward a cure for type 1 diabetes, researchers say they've developed a large-scale method for turning human embryonic stem cells into fully functioning beta cells capable of producing insulin.

Type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disorder affecting upwards of 3 million Americans, is characterized by the body's destruction of its own insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells. Without insulin, which is needed to convert food into energy, blood sugar regulation is dangerously out of whack.

Currently, people with type 1 diabetes need daily insulin injections to maintain blood sugar control. But "insulin injections don't cure the disease," said study co-author Douglas Melton, of Harvard University. Patients are vulnerable to metabolic swings that can bring about serious complications, including blindness and limb loss, he said at a teleconference this week.

"We wanted to replace insulin injections using nature's own solution, being the pancreatic beta cell," Melton said. Now, "we are reporting the ability to make hundreds of millions of these cells," he added.

Melton ultimately envisions a credit card-sized package of beta cells that can be safely transplanted into a diabetes patient and left in place for a year or more, before needing to be replaced.

But between then and now, human trials must be launched, a venture Melton thinks could begin in about three years.

If that research pans out, the Harvard team's results may prove to be a benchmark in the multi-decade effort to deliver on the promise of stem cell research as a way to access new treatments for all sorts of diseases.

Melton, co-director of the Stem Cell Institute at Harvard, described his work as a "personal quest," given that he has two children with type 1 diabetes.

He and his colleagues outlined the recent results in the Oct. 9 issue of Cell.

See the original post:
Stem Cell Success Raises Hopes of Type 1 Diabetes Cure

Those with Type 1 diabetes previously known as juvenile onset diabetes, because it usually occurs in childhood produce no insulin and are dependent on daily insulin injections and blood tests. Meltons brilliant team has developed stem cells that can be reprogrammed to produce insulin, obviating the need for injections, and in the longer term helping to avoid common complications such as strokes, kidney disease and blindness, as well as hypos, which can result in coma or death.

On a lighter note, if the success is reproduced in human trials, it will also presumably save me from having to listen to my husbands appalling jokes (a sure sign of low blood sugar is the fact that he finds what he is saying absolutely hilarious), and that theres no chance of us ruining yet another major social occasion.

The most embarrassing one was when the paramedics coming to treat him managed to set off several car alarms hours after my best friends wedding, more or less under the happy couples window.

It will also mean that I wont have physically to sit on top of him to stop him hurting himself while thrashing around semi-conscious at 6ft 3in to my 5ft 5in, thats no easy task. Although, on the downside, it means that I wont make friends with the local team of paramedics. My husband once regained consciousness to hear one ask me, Now, it was America you were about to go to last time we came here to help, wasnt it?

Politicians and health workers have become fixated on Type 2 diabetes, because of its shocking rise; there are now nearly three million people in the country with Type 2, which is often triggered through obesity and unhealthy lifestyle choices, as opposed to Type 1, where a patients own immune system turns on itself and destroys pancreatic cells. Diabetes is the fastest-growing health threat of our time accounting for 10 per cent of the NHS budget, while 1 million is spent every hour on diabetes.

Meanwhile, too many children and young people struggle on, trying to manage growing up with a chronic illness that affects their life both dramatically but also in mundane ways never being able to be without blood tests or insulin, trying to juggle sensible eating and drinking while all their friends do what they like with no adverse consequences.

And if they do mess up as all those with diabetes do theres often a lack of understanding and sympathy. Back in 2005, police Tasered a man in a bus depot in Leeds who was having a hypo. In the US, a woman was handcuffed and thrown into a police van after police mistook her hypo for drunkenness.

So think for a moment this week about those around you behaving irrationally, stupidly, disconcertingly. They may just need a bit of understanding and some sugar quickly.

Especially if they are telling awful jokes with their pants on their head.

Gorgeous George is a vote-winner

Excerpt from:
A cure for diabetes and awful jokes

By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore

Newser

In this April 29, 2012, file photo, a 19-year-old diagnosed with diabetes gives herself an injection of insulin at her home in the Los Angeles suburb of Commerce.(AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

There's no known cure for Type 1 diabetes, so for 3 million Americans, an insulin pump or regular insulin injections form an imperfect and temporary solution. And it's one that doesn't always keep some of the disease's worst outcomes, including blindness and limb amputation, at bay.

Scientists have long sought a better solution, and a team at Harvard is now announcing that, 15 years into its research, it has successfully coaxed human embryonic stem cells into ones that produce insulin.

When those cells were transferred to diabetic mice, they behaved as healthy cells do and regulated blood sugar. "We can cure their diabetes right awayin less than 10 days," researcher Doug Melton tells NPR.

Six months later, that was still the case, reports CBS News, which calls the research possibly "the biggest breakthrough in years toward a cure." Because while scientists have been able to achieve a similar end with insulin-producing cells sourced from cadavers, they've struggled with how to get the quantity they needed.

Now researchers have "the ability to make hundreds of millions of cells," Melton says. "It's a huge landmark paper," an outside researcher tells NPR. "I would say it's bigger than the discovery of insulin." For Melton, the issue is deeply personal: Both his children, now in their 20s, were diagnosed with the disease as kids.

Among the next steps is to move to clinical trials in humans, possibly in as few as three years. (Another announcement related to blood sugar made waves last month.)

This article originally appeared on Newser: Huge Breakthrough in Quest for Type 1 Diabetes Cure

Read more from the original source:
New diabetes breakthrough 'bigger than the discovery of insulin'

We are now just one pre-clinical step away from the finish line, said Prof Melton.

Asked about his childrens reaction he said: "I think like all kids, they always assumed that if I said I'd do this, I'd do it,

"It was gratifying to know that we can do something that we always thought was possible.

The stem cell-derived beta cells are presently undergoing trials in animal models, including non-human primates, where they are still producing insulin after several months, Prof Melton said.

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition that causes the pancreas to stop producing insulin - the hormone that regulates blood glucose levels.

If the amount of glucose in the blood is too high it can seriously damage the body's organs over time.

While diabetics can keep their glucose levels under general control by injecting insulin, that does not provide the fine tuning necessary to properly control metabolism, which can lead to devastating complications such as blindness or loss of limbs.

Around 10 per cent of all diabetes is Type 1, but it is the most common type of childhood diabetes. 29,000 youngsters suffer in Britain.

The team at Harvard used embryonic stem cells to produce human insulin-producing cells equivalent in almost every way to normally functioning cells in vast quantities.

Chris Mason, Professor of Regenerative Medicine, University College London, said it was potentially a major medical breakthrough.

Go here to see the original:
Cure for Type 1 diabetes imminent after Harvard stem-cell breakthrough

James Shapiro: "Cutting Edge Islet and Stem Cell Transplant Therapies in the Clinic for Diabetes"
A summary of recent progress and outcomes in clinical islet transplantation for the treatment of Diabetes will be provided, together with a discussion of approaches to stem cell transplantation...

By: Talks at Google

See more here:
James Shapiro: "Cutting Edge Islet and Stem Cell Transplant Therapies in the Clinic for Diabetes" - Video

http://www2.prnewswire.com.br/imgs/pub/2014-07-29/original/2032.jpg

http://www2.prnewswire.com.br/imgs/pub/2013-04-08/original/1116.jpg

CIUDAD DE MEXICO, 31 de juliode 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- La obesidad es un problema de salud que padecen muchsimas personas de nuestro pas. Se estima que en los prximos aos Mxico podra ocupar el 7 lugar de pases con diabetes, es decir, casi 12 millones de mexicanos padecindola, nios y adultos, 1 de cada 3 podra tener diabetes.

Foto - http://www2.prnewswire.com.br/imgs/pub/2014-07-29/original/2032.jpg Logo - http://www2.prnewswire.com.br/imgs/pub/2013-04-08/original/1116.jpg

La diabetes es un desorden que resulta de la insuficiente produccin de insulina o resistencia a la insulina donde el cuerpo no puede utilizarla de manera eficiente. La insulina es la responsable de que las clulas absorban la glucosa (azcar) para obtener la energa que necesitan as como el hgado y las clulas grasas para almacenamiento. Si existe una deficiencia de insulina o resistencia entonces los niveles de glucosa (azcar) en la sangre llegan a ser anormalmente altos.

Ningn otro parmetro fsico del cuerpo humano est ms fuertemente ligado a una enfermedad que lo que la obesidad est con la diabetes tipo 2. Aquellas personas que padecen obesidad corren de 40 a 90 veces ms riesgo de tener diabetes comparada con aquellas con un peso normal. Adems parece ser que el riesgo de la diabetes se relaciona con el tiempo que se ha tenido obesidad as como el nivel de obesidad.

Anteriormente se crea que la diabetes tipo 2 es una sentencia de cadena perpetua crnica, una pendiente cuesta abajo; hasta que un estudio cientfico dirigido por Cambridge Weight Plan ha sido capaz de demostrar que la diabetes tipo 2 en realidad es reversible con una dieta muy baja en caloras basada en suplementos alimenticios y vegetales sin almidn, que induce al cuerpo a eliminar la grasa que est obstruyendo el pncreas e impidiendo que este produzca insulina.

Despus de una semana, los niveles de azcar haban vuelto a la normalidad. Despus de dos meses, la grasa en el pncreas de cada paciente haba regresado a los niveles normales y el pncreas produca insulina con normalidad.

Tres meses ms tarde, despus de volver a la alimentacin normal con asesora nutricional, 7 de los 11 pacientes permanecieron libres de diabetes tipo 2.

Quieres saber ms? Revisa el artculo cientfico de esta investigacin http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3168743/ y contacta a tu consultor Cambridge ms cercano.

Read this article:
Diabetes tipo 2 Podra ser reversible?

MONDAY, June 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists are hopeful that cells inside the human gut might someday be retrained to produce insulin, the metabolic hormone that's lacking in people with type 1 diabetes.

The team from Columbia University Medical Center in New York City said their findings hold promise for the development of a new treatment for type 1 diabetes that does not involve stem cells.

For people with type 1 diabetes, their body's natural insulin-producing cells, known as pancreatic beta cells, are destroyed by their immune system. For the past 20 years, scientists have been trying to help the body make new insulin-producing cells that replace those that are lost to the disease.

"The search for the 'holy grail' is to produce a source of insulin producing cells either for transplantation or to convert the body's own cells to make sufficient insulin," said one expert, Dr. Derek LeRoith, professor of medicine and diabetes at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New York City.

Right now, "insulin injections must be used to replace this lack in insulin production and release," said LeRoith, who was not involved in the new research.

Insulin-producing cells have been created before using stem cells, but these cells do not yet fully function like natural insulin-producing cells, the Columbia research team explained.

However, by simply turning off a particular gene, the Columbia scientists were able to convert cells in the human gut into cells that make insulin. They said the findings suggest that "reeducating" existing cells may be an easier way to replace the cells lost in type 1 diabetes than creating new cells using stem cell technology.

"People have been talking about turning one cell into another for a long time, but until now we hadn't gotten to the point of creating a fully functional insulin-producing cell by the manipulation of a single target," study senior researcher Dr. Domenico Accili, a professor of medicine at Columbia, said in a university news release.

Prior research conducted by the team at Columbia involving mice revealed that intestinal cells could be turned into insulin-producing cells. Insulin made by the transformed gut cells was then released into the bloodstream and effectively controlled the blood sugar levels in diabetic mice. The research was subsequently confirmed by another team of scientists.

The Columbia team's latest findings found this technique also hold promise for the treatment of type 1 diabetes in human cells.

See the original post:
Gut Cells May Be Coaxed to Make Insulin for People With Type 1 Diabetes