People suffering from type 1 diabetes may soon not need to inject themselves on daily basis in order to control their blood sugar levels thanks to new findings presented at a meeting hosted by the Journal of the American Medical Association.  

 

According to these findings, type 1 diabetes patients who got stem cell transplants were able to go as long as four years without needing insulin treatments.

 

The study, made by Dr. Richard Burt of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and colleagues, involved 23 patients with type 1 diabetes also known as juvenile diabetes. The disease occurs when the immune system goes haywire and starts attacking itself, destroying insulin-producing cells in the pancreas needed to control blood sugar. These patients constantly need insulin injections to control their diabetes.

 

These patients were injected with stem cells made from their bone marrow cells, a procedure known as as autologous non-myeloablative hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation.

 

The researchers said 20 of 23 patients “became insulin free – 12 continuously and eight transiently – for periods as long as four years.” Those in the transient group had to restart insulin at reduced levels.

 

The researchers first reported the success of autologous non-myeloablative hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation in 2007 but have since looked at how long it persisted.

 

“At the present time (it) remains the only treatment capable of reversing type 1 diabetes mellitus in humans. Randomized controlled trials and further biological studies are necessary to confirm the role of this treatment in changing the natural history of (the disease,” the researchers said.