MGH's study shows that the vaccine could permanently reverse type 1 diabetes.
Two years after starting an innovative phase II clinical trial to reverse type 1 diabetes, researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital have discovered that a vaccine could permanently reverse the disease.
The five-year clinical trial is found in the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin, a cheap and generic vaccine that is used worldwide to prevent tuberculosis.
Dr. Denise Faustman, director of the Immunobiology Laboratory of the Massachusetts General Hospital and main rehearsal researcher, said that the provisional results show that unlike other vaccines that irritate white blood cells to stimulate an immune response, the BCG vaccine affectsWhite blood cells at the genetic level, regulating what genes are expressed and which are not.Consequently, the body stops producing abnormal white blood cells responsible for autoimmune disease, suggesting that the vaccine could permanently reverse type 1 diabetes.
"The vaccine in fact restores its genes to restore normality," Faustman said in an interview."What is showing is that it is not only the vaccine that is being given and that causes inflammation or an immune response. It is actually working at the most basic level of DNA to normalize the expression of genes related to this abnormal immune response,".
The findings were presented on Saturday during the 77 scientific sessions of the American Diabetes Association, one of the largest diabetes meetings in the country.
The results not only bring a broader understanding of the current studies of the type 1 diabetes vaccine, but also explain why the vaccine is so effective in the treatment of other autoimmune disorders - from multiple sclerosis (studies withVaccine are ongoing in Italy) (the vaccine studies are ongoing in Australia).
