Cure hope over diabetes therapy
Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 12:13 pm
A pioneering treatment for diabetes is being rolled out across the country with experts believing it could eventually lead to a cure.
Six centres are receiving nearly £10m of government funding to offer transplants of insulin-producing cells.
The technique has been used on a handful of patients already to reduce the risks of coma-inducing blood sugar attacks in people with type 1 diabetes.
Experts hope the therapy can be refined in the future to offer a complete cure.
People with type 1 diabetes do not produce enough insulin, which means they have to rely on injections of the hormone.
The decision to fund this programme will be life-changing for some people
Douglas Smallwood, of Diabetes UK
There are about 250,000 people with the condition, which usually develops in childhood and is unconnected with lifestyle factors such as obesity unlike the type 2 version of the disease.
The procedure involves obtaining cells - known as islet cells - from the pancreas of a dead donor and injecting them into the patient's liver.
Once there, the cells get to work producing insulin.
The major international breakthrough was announced in 2000 in Canada but the first UK transplant was carried out by London's King's College Hospital in 2002.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7238418.stm
Six centres are receiving nearly £10m of government funding to offer transplants of insulin-producing cells.
The technique has been used on a handful of patients already to reduce the risks of coma-inducing blood sugar attacks in people with type 1 diabetes.
Experts hope the therapy can be refined in the future to offer a complete cure.
People with type 1 diabetes do not produce enough insulin, which means they have to rely on injections of the hormone.
The decision to fund this programme will be life-changing for some people
Douglas Smallwood, of Diabetes UK
There are about 250,000 people with the condition, which usually develops in childhood and is unconnected with lifestyle factors such as obesity unlike the type 2 version of the disease.
The procedure involves obtaining cells - known as islet cells - from the pancreas of a dead donor and injecting them into the patient's liver.
Once there, the cells get to work producing insulin.
The major international breakthrough was announced in 2000 in Canada but the first UK transplant was carried out by London's King's College Hospital in 2002.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7238418.stm