Possible Diabetes Cure

Researchers at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), the University of Calgary and The Jackson Laboratory have achieved what they report as "a breakthrough that has long been the elusive goal of diabetes research." The research has "led to new treatment strategies for diabetes, achieving reversal of the disease without severe, toxic immunosuppression."

Type 1 diabetes, which affects over 20 million in the U.S. alone, is an autoimmune disorder in which the body's pancreatic islet cells become inflamed and are ultimately destroyed, making insulin production impossible. Type 2, the more common diagnosis in the U.S., is the result of insulin resistance combined with relative insulin deficiency. Currently, neither has a cure.

The current treatments of Type 1 are insulin replacement therapies that cannot prevent many side effects such as heart attacks, blindness, strokes, loss of limbs and kidney function. The 21st century has already seen the development of promising new treatment, including pancreatic islet transplantation, but this new development comes at the issue from a new direction: the nervous system. Researchers found that "specific sensory neurons are critical for islet immune attack in the pancreas" and that diabetes results when "these nerves secrete insufficient neuropeptides which sustain normal islet function, creating a vicious circle of progressive islet stress."

After key discoveries leading to "fundamentally new insights into the mechanisms of this disease," the research group was then able to administer treatment to treat the mice by supplying neuropeptides and even reversed established diabetes. Extension of the studies in models of Type 2 diabetes proved promising also, generating strong evidence that treating the islet-sensory nerve circuit could dramatically normalize insulin resistance.