Stem Cell Research – Diabetes Cure On The Horizon?For years, scientists have struggled to understand the root cause of diabetes, a disease which affects people's production of insulin in the body. Insulin is a hormone which helps to process the sugars we take in through our diet. Diabetes therefore has major health implications and can cause serious illness and even death in certain cases. There are now great hopes for stem cell research; diabetes is at the forefront of this research, as it is thought that one of the most straightforward medical conditions to address would be diabetes. Stem Cell research now offers the strong possibility of a cure in the next few years. In diabetes, the person's immune system destroys the beta islet cells within their pancreas. That is now agreed upon by most scientists as the major factor which causes diabetes. However, all the traditional treatments for diabetes focus on diet, exercise and medication with insulin to control the condition.
None of these things address the actual cause. The progress towards ways of replacing these islet cells as quickly as the diabetics' body can destroy them has been painfully slow, but the answer is now thought to be in stem cell research. Diabetes could be a thing of the past if this research finds a way to replace islet cells or even to stop the body destroying them in the first place. How can stem cell research help in diabetes? The simplest way one could use stem cell research for diabetes is to replace the destroyed islet cells in a kind of transplant procedure. But there is more promise than that offered by stem cell research; diabetes cures have been attempted through injection of pancreatic islet cells. However, they have had limited success because of the need to suppress the immune system to avoid their rejection. This would take a long time, be expensive and would involve the patient in an awful lot of treatment Taking immuno-suppressant drugs long term can obviously be problematic as the patient is laid open to much greater risk of infection. These are obviously big problems which doctors have encountered, so attention has turned to stem cell research; diabetes cures are thought to lie in the pancreatic cells. It may be that doctors could learn to manipulate pancreatic islet cells through stem cell research. It is hoped that in this way, the islet cells can be modified so that they no longer destroy the body's natural supplies of insulin. Stem cell research has made steady progress towards this cure for diabetes, isolating particular embryonic stem cells to treat the diabetes. This would particularly be thought as a possible cure for Type 1 diabetes. It is particularly difficult to treat this kind of diabetes; stem cell research is a potential way to discover why and how the body attacks and destroys its own insulin-producing cells. |