Diabetes is considered one of the fastest-growing serious and chronic diseases worldwide, and the risk of this disease is increasing every year. Diabetes is mainly of two types - Type-1 and Type-2. Health experts say, once diabetes is diagnosed, efforts have to be made to keep it under control throughout life. The problem of type-2 diabetes can be controlled by improving lifestyle diet along with medicines, while in the case of type-1 diabetes, patients need to keep taking insulin throughout life.
Now health experts have had a big success in this direction. Chinese scientists say that type-1 diabetes can be cured by stem cell transplantation.
Recently, the problem of diabetes has been cured in a 25-year-old woman. She had been suffering from this disease for more than a decade. Scientists said that through stem cell transplant, the woman has got special benefits in this disease in about two and a half months. Now she can control the sugar level naturally without insulin.
Stem cell transplant is being considered a boon.
According to a report published in a local newspaper in China, a woman suffering from type-1 diabetes for more than a decade has gotten a lot of relief from diabetes after a transplant through invasive surgery. Stem cell transplant surgery took only half an hour. Now women can control diabetes in a better way.
The study report has been published in the Cell Journal.
What is type-1 diabetes?
Before knowing how stem cell transplantation is beneficial, it is important to understand what type-1 diabetes is and why it is considered dangerous.
Type-1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease. This disease can occur when the body's immune system itself starts destroying the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Without insulin, sugar starts accumulating in your bloodstream, which can have many side effects.
So far, islet transplant has been a method for people with type-1 diabetes in which islet cells are removed from the pancreas of a deceased donor and transplanted into the liver of a person with type-1 diabetes. However, this work has been very difficult due to the lack of donors.
Good results seen
The report says that now stem cell therapy has opened up new possibilities for the treatment of diabetes. In this, chemically induced pluripotent stem-cell-driven islets or CiPSC islets are used. For this, the researchers first took cells from the patient and chemically changed some of them. In this process, the cells were converted into islet cells and transplanted back into the patient's body.
The need for insulin may be eliminated.
In June last year, a team of Chinese researchers got approval for clinical research. After this, they transplanted it in their first patient. After the CiPSC islet transplant, the patient's fasting blood glucose levels gradually returned to normal and the need for insulin injections steadily decreased. The report said that 75 days after the transplant, he completely stopped taking insulin injections.
This can certainly prove to help treat type-1 diabetes, experts said.
(PC: Freepik)