Autologous adult stem cell, a promise for type 1 diabetes

Researchers at the University of São Paulo (Brazil) and Northwestern University of Chicago (USA) have conducted a study whose results were published in the journal The Journal of the American Medical Association '(' JAMA ').In the study 15 patients with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes participated. The treatment to which they were subjected was to extract blood or adult hematopoietic stem cells, freeze them while they administered a course of chemotherapy, and then trasplantarles lessons cells.Achievements transplantThe objective of this treatment is, first, remove cells to chemotherapy or defensive immune system, which are those that attack the pancreas, and later transfusion or transplant the patient's own adult stem cells. It seems that these cells could lead to "good" immune cells or may alter the degenerative process of the beta cells of the pancreas.And that seems to have been achieved in most of these 15 participants, and that after undergoing this therapy 14 they did not need insulin at a time that ranged from seven to 36 months.Although it was found through blood tests that most achieved good glucose control and a brake on the deterioration of pancreatic beta cells, evolution varied from patient to patient. Thus, two of them initially They pointed insulin after treatment, they could stop injecting at 20 and 12 months after the stem cell transplant. Instead they are including 11 who had achieved an improvement year again requieron external insulin.Furthermore, and within the side effects experienced by the chemotherapy, most patients had febrile neutropenia (deficiency of blood cells), nausea, vomiting and alopecia (hair loss). One of the participants underwent a bilateral pneumonia as a result of deficit defenses.Despite the variable response of patients, the authors consider these encouraging results, but believe that more research is needed to confirm the role of this treatment and "evaluate the contribution of hematopoietic stem cells in changing the natural history of diabetes Type 1 ".Source: elmundo.es Health