Type 1 diabetes cured in China

[PoliteWriter]

The 25-year-old woman, who had the condition for over a decade, no longer needs insulin injections after undergoing a minimally invasive surgery.

🙄

Why are you rolling your eyes? It's quite a remarkable outcome www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03129-3

Wow, that's incredible if that could become a mainstream treatment eventually.

Islet cell transplants are well established (and happen regularly in the UK).

The interesting thing here is that these islet cells were derived from her own stem cells, not from a cadaver, and she will presumably not need immunosuppressants as they are her own cells. It will be interesting to see whether they fail over time - standard islet cell transplants don’t tend to last that long as they reject quite easily.

Amazing results! As someone at risk of developing type 2 after having GD I hope it can be applied more widely. Even if it’s expensive would surely work out cost effective in the long term if diabetics don’t need drugs or constant blood sugar monitoring.

It'll be a long time before it's rolled out to the gen pub unfortunately as they will need to do trials over long periods of time (years/possibly decades) to ensure it works long term. But it is promising thus far. Following as my mum has diabetes.

Type 1 has not been “cured” and I’m going to ask to have this thread deleted for misinformation. You woefully misunderstand Type 1 and islet treatment. This is an extremely rare and difficult option that the vast majority of T1s do not have access to and instead must continue to risk their lives everyday by calculating insulin doses themselves. Please refrain from posting about sensitive topics on which you have no idea.

The real question is how long term the fix is. You can’t roll this out as a standard surgery if it regresses 12mths down the track, or 2yrs or 5yrs. That all has to be ascertained and then costings done I.e. what time period would be acceptable for surgical management if periodic versus cost of treatment, loss of human production etc otherwise, basically health economics 101.

@MotiRoller better to use this thread to provide more information then?

Here’s a link the Diabetes UK page about islet cell transplantation.

OP is using the word 'cured' because that's what the news outlets are also using. She stated it was cured in one woman. Remission may be a better term.

who knows why the Op is using the word

given the op started the thread but doesn’t seem all the keen on discussing or ever referring to what source he/she read that inspired the thread

This is fantastic! Does anyone know if this has wider implications for other diseases too?

I patient.
1 patient who has liver disease and is on other meds, so would not meet the parameters for a full clinical trial.
She has been a guinea pig, with positive result so far
But this as a treatment, is a long way off