Cure with giant islets?

Gema3's profile photo   04/10/2010 2:54 p.m.

This came out yesterday in the newspaper:

A rare disease opens a research path for the treatment of diabetes
Carlos Had's doctors have discovered a genetic mutation that creates large pancreatic islets
is 12 years old and resides in the United States.They say that it leads a normal life and likes to play basketball.And it only has 2% of the pancreas.The rest, 98%, removed it with three years.He suffered a rare disease described as family hypoglycemia.A genetic mutation caused an increase in insulin secretion, which translated into a sharp drop in blood glucose.The only viable solution so that he could survive was to minimize the number of pancreatic islets: if a healthy pancreas has average between one and two million, she lives with 20,000.As?The response has allowed a group of researchers from the Carlos Haya hospital in Malaga - along with US, Israel and Belgium -eef teams - open a new way of study in the treatment of diabetes, paradoxically the opposite disease to which the little girl suffers.
The team led by the endocrine Antonio Luis Cuesta Muñoz received three years ago from the tissue of the young American patient.He discovered that the girl lived with only 2% of the pancreas because her islets - cell group found in the pancreas responsible for insulin secretion and maintaining blood glucose within normal limits - had very peculiar characteristics byA mutation of the glucocinase gene."They are of great capacity, larger size, proliferate and are highly metabolic," Cuesta explained yesterday.
In fact, the islet affected by the mutation is 2.5 times larger than that of a person without that pathology."Nature itself has been wrong and has told us 'these islets exist, can be created and operated in the human being,'" added the person in charge of the investigation, which yesterday published the prestigious medical magazine 'New England Journal of Medicine'.This finding raises the possibility that "the decrease in blood glucose can help treat blood glucose";That is, diabetes.
Future lines
The Malaga research group works at this time to try to reproduce - "not to create," said Cuesta- these islets "exaggeratedly large and productive" in the laboratory to be used as cell therapy - struggling them - in patients with lack of insulin."It is a project that is in the long term, which is beginning: in this the immediacy does not exist," he said.
But the case of the American girl had a history.Already in 2004, Carlos Haya's research team faced a similar one, with a patient from Finland.It was that same group who described his illness, giving him the name of 'family hypoglycemia'."We saw that I had very large islets, but with a single case it is difficult to say it was due to B," said the endocrine.Years later, however, they would find those characteristics again in that second patient without any family relationship with the first, from another country and another race.It was confirmed that certain genetic mutations could lead to the creation of those different cells.
The managing director of Carlos Haya, Antonio Pérez Rielo, highlighted the "importance of the finding, but without generating false hopes."At the moment, "it opens new research possibilities for future diabetes treatments," he insisted.Pérez Rielo also stressed that this project has been carried out thanks to exclusively public financing, through the Ministry of Health.At present, the different lines of study coordinated by Dr. Cuesta have a budget of 225,000 euros, contributed by the Board and the Ministry of Science."We are talking about first level research and in this line we want to continue," he added."We are at the forefront, with a world reference group for this pathology," concluded the Hospital Innovation Director, José Canon.

When I get the full article I will hang it.
Maybe we know the cure of diabetes: D

Gema3's profile photo
Gema3
04/10/2010 2:54 p.m.
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