I know I enjoy looking at promising medical advances - any type from cancer vaccines to, well, anything. After looking at this one just now, I wondered if we could have a thread sharing what we see. There’s so much research going on now. We look back on polio and such things that are gone now. I wonder what our kids/grandkids will look back on.
It’d be great if this works and spinal cord injuries could be fixed.
Wow @creekland. That sounds very promising. Hope it translates well from mice to humans—some things do while other as really don’t.
Not sure if this is firewalled, but this is another superb one if it works out - curing Type 1 Diabetes:
Brian Shelton’s life was ruled by Type 1 diabetes.
When his blood sugar plummeted, he would lose consciousness without warning. He crashed his motorcycle into a wall. He passed out in a customer’s yard while delivering mail. Following that episode, his supervisor told him to retire, after a quarter century in the Postal Service. He was 57.
His ex-wife, Cindy Shelton, took him into her home in Elyria, Ohio. “I was afraid to leave him alone all day,” she said.
Early this year, she spotted a call for people with Type 1 diabetes to participate in a clinical trial by Vertex Pharmaceuticals. The company was testing a treatment developed over decades by a scientist who vowed to find a cure after his baby son and then his teenage daughter got the devastating disease.
Mr. Shelton was the first patient. On June 29, he got an infusion of cells, grown from stem cells but just like the insulin-producing pancreas cells his body lacked.
Now his body automatically controls its insulin and blood sugar levels.
Mr. Shelton, now 64, may be the first person cured of the disease with a new treatment that has experts daring to hope that help may be coming for many of the 1.5 million Americans suffering from Type 1 diabetes.
“It’s a whole new life,” Mr. Shelton said. “It’s like a miracle.”
Diabetes experts were astonished but urged caution. The study is continuing and will take five years, involving 17 people with severe cases of Type 1 diabetes. It is not intended as a treatment for the more common Type 2 diabetes.
I forwarded this diabetes cure article to a friend whose D has had type 1 diabetes nearly every 30 years and was very early with an insulin pump 20 years ago or so.
Please, my 32 year old has had type 1 since age 4 and I admit we are a bit jaded. But we get tired of people sending us possible cures. Read the article closely. This “cure” requires immunosuppressants for the rest of your life. For two reasons. One, the body rejects the new cells as foreigh. And two, type 1 is an autoimmune disorder and the immune system will destroy the cells all over again, just as they did before diagnosis, and will continue to destroy and cells that are given.
Until there is a way to encapsulate the new beta cells, which noone has been able to do, this is just another false hope.
Not many with type 1 will give up their onerous 24/7 regiment of vigilance, or even a life with constant danger, in favor or immunosuppressants. And honestly, was Mr. Shelton on a pump and CGM? Even with extreme hypoglyciemia awareness, it seems those devices could help, even though the life is difficult.
I didn’t read/know about the immunosuppressants. The patient I know is on a pump and leads a pretty good life, as long as she’s able to avoid infections.
If it works, it will allow those who have it a choice. I never see choices as bad. Not everyone has to choose the same thing.
Curing so many things starts with baby steps, some forward and some back. It’s a bit like learning. We don’t start the beginning of a course with the final exam. I doubt the researchers would stop at that point - esp since the main guy has two kids of his own dealing with Type I.
I don’t think you understand the issues. This is a choice between two evils, and the lesser one is to continue with current treatments. The CGM is a more significant advance than a pump but the combination makes things a little less dangerous. Noone has been able to come up with a way to encapsulate beta cells. We started 'walking for a cure" in 1995 when we were naive. There is a lot of bitterness in the type 1 community. Noone understand the disease and everyone expects us to be happy when cures that are not at all a cure are announced in a media that doesn’t understand either.
For my kid’s entire childhood and adolescence, the school nurse called me every hour, and I got up every single night- no night off- at 1 am and 3 am to check her blood sugar. There are advances now that make it easier. But I would still get up all night to avoid immunosuppressants for my child. This is not a cure, any more than a pancreas transplant is a reasonable cure.
This is a rare disease, 5% of the population with diabetes. At least Melton got funding.
Here is a better article:
How Big Is Vertex’s News for Its Potential Diabetes Cure? | The Motley Fool
Many of the comments on the NY Times are similar to mine: this is not a cure, and the media doesn’t understand type 1. Also this is one person, 90 days and the average blood sugar was still way too high.
Trials of encapsulated cells may be coming next year.
Taking immunosuppressants such as when you get an organ transplant, opens up all kinds of problems and should only be used as a very last resort.
I’m agreeing with everything you wrote, but emphasizing that you should do everything you can to avoid immunosuppressants.
Yes, imagine living the rest of your life under pre-vaccine avoidance of COVID-19, except that it applies to all infectious diseases (including those which others are unconcerned about because of minimal effects to everyone else). Also imagine that vaccines will be ineffective or much less effective for you.
That is why pancreas transplants are not generally used for type 1 diabetes, unless the person needs some other transplant that requires immunosuppression anyway. The Vertex method described above is essentially similar except that a whole donor pancreas is not needed.
And yet we are inundated with linked articles, and friends and relatives who read them, all expecting us to be overjoyed about the coming cure. The NY Times barely mentioned the need for immunosuppressants, didn’t understant the HcA1c of 7.2, and did a poor job of explaining type 1 versus type 2. My last post on this- don’t want to be tiresome- but this kind of thing, for me, sows even more distrust in the media for health matters- which is relevant in these times.
Generalist journalists and media, even when they try to be honest and “high quality” (as opposed to those writing opinions as “news”), may not have enough background knowledge about the subject to avoid being used to make what is effectively a company press release or as a pass through for passing someone’s opinion off as news.
Editors do not give space for explanations of, say, the difference between type 1 and 2 or even that type 1 is autoimmune. Journalists have told me this apologetically. And yup, press release.
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This is one of my older threads, but the news I just read fits well on it, so I’m putting it here. I really hope this blood test trial is correct and it gets developed into widespread use, esp now that cancer runs in my immediate family. I wish it had been around for my mom (sigh). Catching hers early could have meant she’d still be here with our family enjoying life.
My daughter recently started an immune modulating medication. Two days after her first covid vaccine she suddenly became allergic to some foods she regularly ate and she developed eosinophilic esophagitis. The list of her allergies has kept growing since then, and the long term effects of that and EoE are rather scary.
The medication she started was just approved for her condition and I am so thankful for it. She has had localized reactions at the injection sites which made us nervous as we didn’t know if they would get worse with each injection, but the last shot was fine. She needs to inject once a week which is twice as much as when this medication is used for other conditions, so I am very relieved that the last shot was uneventful.
Unfortunately, there is a chance that she will get more infections which is also not pleasant to think about since her immune system already much weaker now now than it was. But I’m hopeful that her immune system over-reactions will settle down and she will be able to add more food back into her diet.
Her former pediatrician who still sees my youngest daughter had a patient with EoE who could only eat potatoes. I think if my daughter’s case progressed to that point, we would have a real problem because her dietary limitations have already caused a lot of mental strain.
More about the Galleri test from the company offering it: https://www.galleri.com/
I.e. about half of cancers are detected by the test, while each detection is accompanied by about 1.5 false positives (which make up about 1 in 200 people without cancer who were given the test).
How Much Does the Galleri Test for Cancer Screening Cost? | Galleri® says that the list price is $949, though actual price may vary depending on the provider and insurance plan.
I have a kid with autoimmune issues. He had two bowel resections for Crohn’s disease when he was 13 and then started Remicade infusions every eight weeks. He has been in surgical and medical remission for fifteen years. He also has asthma and severe intractable eczema which no medication or regimen (except high dose steroids) could touch. He started Dupixent injections six weeks ago and it’s unbelievable. His skin is completely clear and he no longer itches for the first time in 28 years. So yay for biologics.
Does the Galleri test show recurrence of treated cancers? I had breast cancer 7 1/2 years ago and can never get over the fact that there is no way to check for recurrence (I had double mastectomy so imaging isn’t helpful).
@MACmiracle I have similar dietary limitations and it was suggested I had EoE but I have never had the biopsy. I swallow Flovent when I have trouble. Some of my food “allergies” have abated over 15 years but many remain. Living alone, I barely notice but when around others it is harder, so I sympathize with a younger person. Interestingly I also have lupus and get systemically ill in the sun. Hope your daughter improves!