Type 1 diabetic is (apparently) cured? (blood, blood sugar, insulin, work)

[fluffythewondercat]

I imagine this article is behind a paywall, but you can subscribe for $1 a week.

It's a remarkable story about a researcher who has two diabetic children and a man who has struggled with diabetes all his life. And how stem cells were used to grow insulin-producing islet cells.

A Cure For Type 1 Diabetes? For One Man, It Seems to Have Worked

Brian Shelton’s life was ruled by Type 1 diabetes.

When his blood sugar plummeted, he would lose consciousness without warning. He crashed his motorcycle into a wall. He passed out in a customer’s yard while delivering mail. Following that episode, his supervisor told him to retire, after a quarter century in the Postal Service. He was 57.

His ex-wife, Cindy Shelton, took him into her home in Elyria, Ohio. “I was afraid to leave him alone all day,” she said.

Early this year, she spotted a call for people with Type 1 diabetes to participate in a clinical trial by Vertex Pharmaceuticals. The company was testing a treatment developed over decades by a scientist who vowed to find a cure after his baby son and then his teenage daughter got the devastating disease.

Mr. Shelton was the first patient. On June 29, he got an infusion of cells, grown from stem cells but just like the insulin-producing pancreas cells his body lacked.

Now his body automatically controls its insulin and blood sugar levels.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/27/h...tem-cells.html

[Buckeye77]

Here's an better source:

https://nationworldnews.com/type-1-d...o-have-worked/

[I_am_too_sweet]

"Diabetes specialists were surprised, but called for caution. The study is ongoing and will last for five years and will involve 17 people with severe cases of type 1 diabetes."

5 years !

Why can't they do an operation warp speed when diabetes directly or indirectly kills more people then covid 19 every year ?

[I_am_too_sweet]

Treatment reverses young man's type 1 diabetes. Will it last?


Dr. Lisa Forbes -- his doctor and co-author of a letter describing his case in the Oct. 8 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine -- stopped short of calling the drug a cure for type 1 diabetes.

But Forbes, an assistant professor of pediatrics, immunology, allergy and rheumatology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said the patient's diabetes appears to have been reversed. She hopes it will stay that way as long as he keeps taking the oral medication called ruxolitinib (Jakafi). It's in a class of medications known as JAK inhibitors.

Whether this drug can help others with type 1 diabetes isn't yet known. This patient had a genetic mutation that ruxolitinib is known to work on. Forbes said it's not clear if other people with type 1 diabetes also have this specific genetic mutation.

medicalxpress.com/news/2020-10-treatment-reverses-young-diabetes.html

[Ruth4Truth]

What's exciting, is that they're using stem cells to grow new insulin-producing cells. Stem-cell therapy for all kinds of things is in various experimental stages. This gives hope.

Thanks for posting, OP! And Happy New Year!