is it true or not? ,time will tell
log on to http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/211246.php
The article states that there is no reason why this should not be a feasible option for women as well, using egg cells instead of sperm cells. Very interesting. Also, the fact that the patient donates their own cure is an important fact, meaning the treatment would be available to pretty much everyone, if it is a success. Will want to keep my eye on this :-)
Says you can probably cure both, but even if the cure were only for males, I would be dissapointed personally but happy that cure is possible for half the population of Type 1s.
It is a start. I've always thought a cure is when I wouldn't have to take immunosuppression drugs. This would be a cure. Fingers crossed!!
I'm really happy to have such a good advance in treatment, but it won't help everybody. There are people under puberty and over fifty that will need some other type of help.
It would be a cure for Type 2 males, as well, if someone only acknowledged that they exist! And have a deficit of beta cells!
this is quite possibly the only thing in the world i would consider giving 1 gram of testicular tissue for...
The question for me is how to stop the autoimmune reaction -- this sounds like a way to build new islet cells. What will stop my rampant immune system from just killing those off like it did with the old ones.
I think that the cure will need to deal with autoimmunity, about which we know a lot less.
Exactly. The doc's line in there about using your own cells means there's no chance of rejection seems to be overly simplistic when we're talking about an autoimmune disease. The immune system has already attacked these cells at least once, and most likely will again unless something else is done to stop it.
I've always thought of the autoimmune reaction as happening during a specific event; the body gets a virus, fights it off, goes into overkill and obliterates the beta cells. Perhaps there's something about them that is similar to the virus? This was the case for me and my mother; we developed type 1 at the same time--me at three years old, her in her late 30's, and were both very ill with a bug before we began exhibiting diabetic symptoms (and no, the bug was not just diabetes itself; and I will add that both my mother and I were both extremely fit, healthy individuals; doctors are always mystified when they look at our records, and tell us that we--especially my mother--should not be diabetic).
If this simple 'overkill' is the case, perhaps the cells would not be attacked again. If it were not the case, there is much that can be done in the way of encoding cell surfaces to change the way that the immune systems consider the cells. The exact technology may not exist now, but I wouldn't say it's impossible. Look at all the research they've done for HIV, to discover how the virus manages to mutate its mechanisms so quickly. Forgive me if I'm not phrasing this right, my brain is fried from cramming for a math final and I have not had a chance to peep at my Biology books in ages. Next year though! The basis of what I am trying to say is that if the body considers the beta cells to still be a threat, there are possibilities in developing coatings for the cells (such as those seaweed coated injectable beta cells I was hearing about on these forums, an experiment going on in Australia if memory serves correctly) or changing protein receptors to take them off the immune system's radar.
Fingers crossed! :o)
Talking about women here, too. We don't have many eggs over the age of fifty.
Once antibodies are there, they are there to stay, or at least last a long time. Think of immunizations -- many of them are good for life, and those that aren't still last a long time.
Another thing that kills off the beta cells is a certain kind of T-cell, and I don't know whether those hang around or not, but I suspect they do, or at least can be manufactured rapidly in response to a challenge.
The manufacture of self-cloned beta cells at the moment seems to be a better hope for Type 2's, in whom there is a deficiency of insulin production, but no auto-immune response in most cases.
Yep - another example of solving the symptoms not the cause...