You have heard it a few times to many. Diamyd is only recruiting newly diagnosed patients. Does this mean that you who have had Type 1 Diabetes for 10 years is out of luck?
Not necessarily.
In the traditional view, insulin producing beta cells who got killed by the auto-immune reaction, was gone forever. That is why islet transplantation is a sought after research area. But what if the body can recreate the beta cells? That would mean that a 40 y/o patient with type 1 diabetes who got the Diamyd vaccine would be able to recreate 20% of the beta cells each year, meaning 100% recovery after only 5 years.
This is of course still very early and with a lot of "if".
- Diamyd vaccine must work (2 x phase III trials ongoing + 1 x phase II ongoing)
- The body must be able to recreate beta cells after destruction.
Even with only 20-30% of the beta cells, the patient would be much better of. Who wouldn't want a life-long honeymoon period?
I understand this is not proven science yet, but it's possible, with no big side effects and only 2-4 injections 4-8 weeks apart.
Some links:
http://www.healthcentral.com/diabetes/c/14/1390/beta-cell-explained
http://www.diabetesselfmanagement.com/articles/Diabetes_Definitions/Beta_Cell_Regeneration
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-DK-05-007.html
http://www.jci.org/115/1/5?content_type=abstract
Friday, May 2, 2008
How Diamyd may cure older diabetes patients
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
1 comments:
I think there are several ways that Diamyd could end up working for non-honeymoon type-1s:
1. Beta cells may just naturally regrow. This many happen very slowly, so previous studies have not noticed it. This is one of the big changes in type-1 cure research in the last 10 years or so. It used to be "common knowledge" that beta cells were gone for good, but I think that recently there is a growing belief that beta cells do regenerate. It is still unclear how much they regenerate, and how quickly.
2. Drugs to encurage the growing of new beta cells. I've heard of HGH and also INGAP doing this, so maybe Diamyd plus one of those drugs (or a similar drug) will work for established diabetics.
3. Transplants. Use Diamyd to stop the immune attack, and then transplat stem cell grown beta cells. No immunusupressive drugs needed (because of the step cells) and no attack on the new beta cells, because of Diamyd!
Joshua Levy
Post a Comment