Diabetes Cure Guide

Islet Cell Transplant is an advanced treatment against Type 1 diabetes, which requires introduction of islet cells into the liver of the patient. The liver is a good site for the said transplant because the cells appear to produce more insulin in that environment.

However, intake of a life-long immunosuppressant drug has been a drawback in this kind of diabetes treatment, as it is believed that it can harm the islet cells over time.

Immunosuppressants are needed because the immune system will try to reject the new cells. Some of these medications may cause noticeable side effects, such as weight gain, acne, facial hair, stomach upset or diarrhea. These effects may decrease as time goes by. Thus, a group of researchers tried the possibility of getting rid of these suppressant drugs after taking in islet cell transplant.

Good news is an innovative biochemical manipulation was discovered and is believed to be the answer to such drawbacks. A group of researchers studied the immune system regulatory T-cells which could help the immune system identify the bad entities from the good ones.

The researchers used an immune system signaler, which is the dendritic cell to target Foxp3 activity much more specifically and shield only the islet cells from immune system attack. They avoided this to turn all T-cells into random immune suppressors because it could lead to more cancers and problems.

Lead researcher Dr. Suthanthiran believed that these dendritic cells are highly efficient in turning natural regulatory cells into islet protective cells. The dendritic cells made sure that this protective immunosuppression was targeted to islet cells, specifically.

Thus, there has been a successful result in the islet transplantation done on diabetic mice without the presence of any pharmacologic immunosuppression. The transplanted islet cells stayed healthy and produced insulin over the full nine weeks of the study.

More than that, researchers also discovered that such approach also shields the pancreas' own islet cells from harm which is important since newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes patients often have some percentage of working islet cells remaining. It is believed that this strategy could protect those cells, as well as the transplanted cells. They are also confident that this approach wouldn't also protect other types of transplanted cells or organs, including lung, kidney and hearts transplants.

Though the study was made based on experiments done to a mouse, there is a great chance that such approach will also work on humans with Type 1 diabetic. The group has long been focusing on an approach that would no longer need an immunosuppressant drug on an islet cell transplant. They claimed it would be the best cure for Type 1 diabetes. This work was funded by the American Society of Transplantation, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Another latest innovation on islet cell transplant is the move of Canadian doctors to start using a digestive enzyme, plus heat and a shaking process to dissolve the pancreas and retrieve many healthy islet cells. This time, the treatment no longer requires incision and has very few complications. With sophisticated imaging equipment, doctors simply inject the cells into the patient’s liver through a catheter inserted into a major blood vessel.

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