Dream cure may become reality

If you suffer from Type 1 diabetes or rheumatoid arthritis, then hope may be on its way.

International scientists are claiming the dream of reducing – and even eliminating – daily insulin injections may become reality for people with Type 1 diabetes by treating the cause of the debilitating disease, rather than its effects.

While most research focuses on replacing damaged islets, Professor Young Zhao and his colleagues at Chicago’s University of Illinois, are targeting the defective immune system.

The team used so-called mesenchymal stem cells obtained from human cord blood to “re-educate” misbehaving immune cells, or lymphocytes.

They did so by passing patients’ blood through a “stem cell educator” containing layers of cord blood stem cells for two or three hours then returning it to the patients.

The daily dose of insulin, after a 12 week treatment, was reportedly nearly reduced by 40% in the nine volunteers involved in the study.