Stem cells reverse woman’s diabetes
nature.com
nature.com
While these treatment options are so much better than even 10 years ago, the supplies can get very expensive if you don't have health insurance (in the US anyway). Luckily I do.
One company working on functional "cures" is Vertex [2]. They have one which requires immunosuppressive drug therapy alongside stem cell treatment (VX-880) and another which involves encapsulated stem cells which does not (VX-264). I'm sure there are many other companies working similarly to the one highlighted in this article.
Personally, given the great control I have right now, my insurance covering a good portion of the supplies, and the relative ease of use of the Loop app, I wouldn't take immunosuppressive therapies.
That said, I know the calculus is different for everyone; it's really a matter of personal circumstance and in some cases, luck.
Either way, I'm glad that research is being done and scientists are working on these various approaches. It's been an incredible 30 years I've been able to see with therapies advancing!
[0] https://loopkit.github.io/loopdocs/
[1] https://docs.diy-trio.org/en/latest/
[2] https://www.vrtx.com/our-science/pipeline/type-1-diabetes/
As a Type 1 diabetic, I'm not sure I would agree. Surely immune suppressants would suppress our whole immune system not just the faulty bit which opens us up to all sorts of problems. I don't think that is someone I would like to risk just to avoid taking insulin. Mind you I have to confess my attitude might be affected by the fact that I don't have to pay for insulin.
It is like type 1, but much, much slower progressing - hence why it shows up at adult age, compared to childhood. Unlike type 2, you can't keep it under control by lifestyle changes. My in-law is a physically fit person with a good diet, and has been his whole life.
In any case, after the onset of symptoms, he had to get treatment. No treatment leads to further organ damage, which eventually leads to death.
About 6 months ago she suddenly started dropping weight. Extreme exhaustion (winded after going up a flight of stairs), dropped 30 pounds in two months, she was starting to get skeletal. Still not being active with her healthcare, but when she went under 110lbs for the first time since she was 14, she finally found the motivation she needed to get proactive and quickly found a better team of doctors who diagnosed her with Type 1 and put her on Insulin immediately.
Today we're putting her 2nd Omnipod on her for insulin delivery. She should get a closed loop system soon, I guess the iPhone support for her Omnipod+Dexcom combo is still going through FDA approval. Her new team says she's lucky to be alive at all. They've been going through her extensive medical history, pointing at occasions when she was hospitalized during her menses and saying "here you were going through diabetic ketoacidosis, that's why you were vomiting constantly", "every evening you're going critically low, that's why family thought you were a closet alcoholic", and "on average during the day your blood glucose is far, far too high, that's why you drink and piss gallons of water per day but are never sated".
So... I guess yes you can get lucky and survive, but with symptoms strong enough that it _should_ be caught.
There is no way I'm bringing these up to her, though. For my own self-preservation. Over the last few months we've had a long-running argument about the operation of her Dexcom glucose monitor -- she's been convinced that it requires a continuous, active internet signal to function. Her proof was that every time she went into the basement at work, her Dexcom stopped reporting her glucose levels. When she comes upstairs, then she suddenly gets notified that she's been spiking or dipping for the last hour.
Everything under the sun, included the sun (remember that solar flare the other week? Yeah that was also pointed at as a problem) has been blamed for her Dexcom not informing her of dips and spikes. Yesterday evening her new Omnipod app told her to stop enabling Airplane Mode or BatterySaver, as these toggles interrupt bluetooth communications. She's been turning those on every time she goes into the basement at work to save battery.
It's just best if nothing I have touched or created is involved in any way.
> Because the woman was already receiving immunosuppressants for a previous liver transplant,
This makes sense - this was the first trial, so doing this on a person already on immunosuppressants minimizes risk while still validating the basics of if it works at all in the first place.
It’s true that you wouldn’t do this unless they were already needed, say, a liver transplant.
The potential of the stem cell space is incredible. Another interesting development is patients "cured" of HIV following stem cell transplants to treat leukaemia - which has no direct clinical implications given the significant risk of stem cell transplant but does inspire hope for the future [1].
Edit: Source: https://www.who.int/news/item/25-07-2024-a-seventh-case-of-h...
I think too many HIV patients were too compromised by opportunistic infections to ever be healthy enough for stem cell transplants
You could argue for the location having physiological implications, for instance: it's convenient for the liver to be right after the intestines (connected through the portal vein), like this, it metabolizes large amounts of whatever is absorbed intestinally at once, before it reaches systemic circulation. This may hold true for the pancreas as well. It uses duodenal glucose concentrations to know exactly how much insulin to release, which may not be representative of the rest body's glucose concentrations. Practically speaking, it is far safer to inject stem cells in the abdomen where you have room for erscqror and can do surgery on without much trouble vs the pancreas, if anything goes wrong there, you could easily kill a patient.
That's always easier said than done, isn't it? I'm sure many of us wish they had taken better care of their bodies when they were younger, but sometimes life gets in the way, long term impacts are unclear, and we overestimate our ability to "fix it later".
Reversing a condition once you have it is an order of magnitude more difficult to fix than to prevent, but if you're in luck and able to do so, every day now has the potential for taking a step in the right direction.
My favorite example of this is post-menopausal women regaining bone density, muscle mass, balance, mood etc. to rival women half their age in a matter of a few weeks (weight training). The same can be said for pre-diabetes, early T2, high blood pressure, addictions... the list goes on.
With regards to OP, I hope you find some relief somehow! I still have some baby teeth with very short roots; the second I get inflamed gums my pain level approaches levels were I can't function properly. What is the symptoms of receded gums?
Agreed, what's that phrase, "The best time to start was 20 years ago, the second best time is now"?
But it's also important to be a little kind to yourself, don't be too harsh on yourself for the things you didn't do or could have done differently. You can't go back in time.
Nowadays my gums just don't bleed ever, period, even when the hygienist is scrapping away calculus.