By Evan Stehwien, Type 1 Diabetic since age 5 (www.quora.com)
Basically, we don’t have the technology to replace an organ yet.
Type 1 diabetes comes about when the body stops producing insulin, because the immune system destroys the beta cells in the pancreas. In order to cure T1D, you need to get the body to produce its own insulin again.
Transplants seem like a good idea. Take functioning beta cells, if you can find 2–3 donors, and put them in the diabetic person. However, the body’s immune system is really good at destroying things that come from outside the body. Anyone who receives a transplant needs to take a combination of immunosuppresive drugs for the rest of their life.
Replacing one life-long medicine with another doesn’t seem like a cure to me, and that’s ignoring the side effects on one’s kidneys and rather dismal rate of success. After 1 year, 42% of patients were back on insulin, and that number only gets higher as the years go on. Transplants aren’t a viable cure, and won’t be for the foreseeable future.
What about stem cells? That’s a very promising area of research. In 2016, a researcher at MIT found a method of replication billions of beta cells from embryonic stem cells, so it will be easy to generate enough tissue to transplant. If you can get the adult stem cells of a patient to regrow beta cells, you avoid rejection from the immune system. Unfortunately, we don’t know what mechanism would trigger that kind of regrowth.
There was a major breakthrough in 2017. French and Austrian researchers working independently discovered that it’s possible to cause alpha cells to stop producing glugagon and start producing insulin. There have been no human trials yet, but I think it’s the closest thing to a cure so far.
I didn’t discuss type 2 because the line between effective management and cure or reversal is much more blurry. With type 1, the cure is obvious. Get that organ to secrete insulin again so I don’t have to inject it.
Read Also How To Reverse Diabetes Naturally (Latest Diabetes Breakthrough)
Basically, we don’t have the technology to replace an organ yet.
Type 1 diabetes comes about when the body stops producing insulin, because the immune system destroys the beta cells in the pancreas. In order to cure T1D, you need to get the body to produce its own insulin again.
Transplants seem like a good idea. Take functioning beta cells, if you can find 2–3 donors, and put them in the diabetic person. However, the body’s immune system is really good at destroying things that come from outside the body. Anyone who receives a transplant needs to take a combination of immunosuppresive drugs for the rest of their life.
Replacing one life-long medicine with another doesn’t seem like a cure to me, and that’s ignoring the side effects on one’s kidneys and rather dismal rate of success. After 1 year, 42% of patients were back on insulin, and that number only gets higher as the years go on. Transplants aren’t a viable cure, and won’t be for the foreseeable future.
What about stem cells? That’s a very promising area of research. In 2016, a researcher at MIT found a method of replication billions of beta cells from embryonic stem cells, so it will be easy to generate enough tissue to transplant. If you can get the adult stem cells of a patient to regrow beta cells, you avoid rejection from the immune system. Unfortunately, we don’t know what mechanism would trigger that kind of regrowth.
There was a major breakthrough in 2017. French and Austrian researchers working independently discovered that it’s possible to cause alpha cells to stop producing glugagon and start producing insulin. There have been no human trials yet, but I think it’s the closest thing to a cure so far.
I didn’t discuss type 2 because the line between effective management and cure or reversal is much more blurry. With type 1, the cure is obvious. Get that organ to secrete insulin again so I don’t have to inject it.
Read Also How To Reverse Diabetes Naturally (Latest Diabetes Breakthrough)
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