Unfortunately there is no diabetes cure yet. Diabetes is a very complicated disease that is divided into two types. Type I which is considered the mildest and Type II which could endanger the life of a person. Either way, science hasn’t been able to discover how to eradicate it. The good thing is that it seems that we may soon see a diabetes cure. At least for Type I diabetes.
Advances
Diabetes Type I is also known as insulin-dependent diabetes or childhood diabetes. It usually attacks children or adolescents and its appearance leads to the absence of insulin. The current treatment is using insulin injections, diet, exercise and continuous monitoring on the levels of glucose in the blood of the affected person.
A proposed diabetes cure for this kind of diabetes is the transplant of islet cells from the pancreas of a compatible donor. This procedure has produced great advances in Type I patients, but it is still at the experimental status. In 20% of the cases, it doesn’t work so it can’t be considered a complete cure. And, it can’t be used to treat children.
On the other hand, there is diabetes Type II. In this kind of diabetes, insulin levels are normal. The problem is with the surrounding tissue which stops accepting insulin. The actual choice is to use a drug like metformin, do exercise and eat a balanced diet. Unfortunately, not too many people in the US follow this regime and can die as a consequence.
Near Term Breakthroughs
Medicine is always evolving. Thanks to the advances of technology, specially biotech and nanotech, scientists have been able to explore new types of treatments that could make life easier to a person who suffers of diabetes. One of these possible breakthroughs are spleen cells.
Right now the Massachusetts General Hospital Immunobiology Laboratory is using spleen cells in mice. And in many cases the disease is stopped, even reversed. The research is still going on and it may take one decade or even as much as fifteen years until we start seeing the results of so many years of investigation.
Another possibility that is being explored is the use of gene therapy. The Baylor College of Medicine is testing a new procedure in which they inject cells to the livers of infected mice. The initial results show that the mice are cured. Fortunately, these two institutions aren’t the only ones searching for a diabetes cure. Sooner or later, we will eradicate this disease.
