Why Diabetic Cannot be Cured

According to the NHS it gets progressively worse. The progress can be slowed in T2's by eating foods to keep the sugar levels down.Experiments in replacement of beta cells have not yet produced a cure.

The "Newcastle Diet" apparently demonstrates that type 2 diabetes can be reversed, by temporary severe restriction of calories.

That description of type 2 diabetes is not correct by the way. It is not insulin deficiency and pancreatic failure, except in late stages. It typically involves overproduction of insulin. The main characteristic of type 2 diabetes is increased insulin resistance.

If you google 'beta cell regeneration' you will find that some studies have shown that some individuals are capable of beta cell regrowth - and some are not.

Spiker said:

That description of type 2 diabetes is not correct by the way. It is not insulin deficiency and pancreatic failure, except in late stages. It typically involves overproduction of insulin. The main characteristic of type 2 diabetes is increased insulin resistance.

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And insulin resistance ('IR') is (according to some doctors) brought on, or at least exacerbated, as a response to excess fat deposits in the body. This diminishes as fat is reduced during weight loss.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_resistance for some useful information on IR.

2131tom said:

And insulin resistance ('IR') is (according to some doctors) brought on, or at least exacerbated, as a response to excess fat deposits in the body. This diminishes as fat is reduced during weight loss.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_resistance for some useful information on IR.

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Yes, but it can also be brought on by other things (in my case medication and PCOS)
Although to be fair, I'm not sure whether the PCOS just makes you more likely to produce fatty deposits...
The medication is a major pain in the derrière though.

Glucagon has a major effect on liver and pancreas, the liver has a big say on how much insulin is released.
A fatty liver has been shown to increase the likely hood of diabetes.

I read the other day that you can have cell transplant for the pancreas. Obviously, I doubt if it's on the NHS.

SJC said:

I read the other day that you can have cell transplant for the pancreas. Obviously, I doubt if it's on the NHS.

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It is available on nhs. My relative used to arrange all transplants for Scotland and now setting them up for Maltese govt. He definitely organised islet cells transplants on nhs etc but only to those that so desperately needed them and fell in to the strict criteria needed to get them.

Diabetes should be manageable.. Unfortunately some on human insulin lack hypo recognition and these patients are more likely to get transplants.. However the transpant of cells rquires a huge amount of cells and doesn't last much more I believe than 3 years (if that) before insulin is needed again.


Sent from the Diabetes Forum App

A couple of months ago I was on a fairly long train ride. I was filling out my diabetic food diary, and the girl sitting next to me happened to glance at what I was doing. We got chatting, and it turned out she was a pharmacy student in her final year of university. She said diabetes research has featured heavily in her degree. She said that there is something in the works at the moment (although it will be a few years before it's ready for large scale clinical trials). Basically insulin producing beta cells are implanted into the body, but in the liver rather than the pancreas for some reason. The problem for type 1 diabetics is that it is an autoimmune disease; the body destroys it's own beta cells, believing them to be a virus. To get round this, the implanted cells are coated in something, which masks them from the body's immune system. Apparently it's a bit of a halfway house between a treatment and a cure; the new beta cells will still get destroyed eventually, but if will take the immune system a number of years to realise what's going on and destroy the cells.
As I said, all of this information comes from a half hour chat on a train, but it's good to know that there are various approaches being tried. And some of them are so cunning, Blackadder himself would steal them and pass them off as his own ideas.

Notwithstanding, I believe treatment and mindfulness about one's lifestyle is key to the management of diabetes

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There was a lecture in the Coursera course on islet transplantation.
At the moment, after 5 years only 7.5% of recipients remain free of insulin BUT only a proportion of these have totally rejected the 'graft'. They have some detectable C peptide just not enough to keep normal glucose levels. Those that suffered from severe hypos (as many did) no longer seem to have this problem ie their glucose levels are now easier to control.
The lecturer said

islet transplantation has greatly improved the quality for the patients with severe type one diabetes in those patients that retain functioning cells. And this is by relieving the glucose instability and problems with hypoglycemia, as long as the graft survives. Furthermore, it has been suggested that the scarce availability of the organ donor islets should rather be distributed among more patients, with the indications to primarily prevent recurrent hypoglycemia, rather than achieving the full independence of insulin injections

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.
He also went on to describe the work that they are doing (he works for Novo) in the field of stem cells working towards 'growing' viable stem cells. These as mentioned above will be encapsulated both to protect them from autoimmune attack but also so they can be easily removed. They can grow cells that produce insulin but still have to improve techniques, do animal trials and then build a production facility so there is still a long way to go.