New Edinburgh diabetes lab brings promise

A new diabetes laboratory in Edinburgh could help to provide revolutionary diabetes treatment for sufferers of type 1 diabetes mellitus. The treatment will be performed for the first time at the Scottish Islet Isolation Laboratory. The lab will operate 24 hours a day to provide new cell transplant treatment from pancreas that have been donated. The cells will be injected into the liver of type 1 diabetes sufferers.
The Scottish National Blood Transfusion associated medical director, Professor Marc Turner, was reported in BBC news as commenting: “The majority of people in Scotland with diabetes control it with diet and drugs. However, some have great difficulty in controlling their diabetes as their blood sugar swings up and down, so this development should enable us to offer a way of controlling their diabetes more successfully. For those patients who do need a pancreas transplant, which is a high-risk surgical procedure, it will be a much more straight-forward and safe procedure.”
Meanwhile, the lead clinician for the Islet Cell Programmen, John Casey, reportedly said: “Islet isolation is a new and highly skilled technique which can prove life-saving for some patients who are unaware of the level of sugar in their blood.”