Stem Cell Treatment Worked on One Patient's Type 1 Diabetes

Using stem cells in medical treatments has long been a subject in the spotlight — both for the potential that this therapy can offer for a number of conditions and for the controversies surrounding this approach. The last year has seen a few significant announcements made about stem cell breakthroughs, including one that could make bone marrow treatments much easier.

That isn’t the only big news in this space, however — a recently-published paper in the journal Cell reveals that doctors have been able to reverse the effects of Type 1 diabetes using stem cells.

In an article for Nature, Smriti Mallapaty chronicled the results of this therapy, which lines up with an earlier case where doctors in Shanghai successfully treated a different patient’s type 2 diabetes. According to the Cell paper, the Type 1 diabetes patient “achieved sustained insulin independence” 75 days after the procedure took place.

The scientists documenting their work did so a year after the patient had been given the stem cell treatment. The results were very promising. “The patient’s time-in-target glycemic range increased from a baseline value of 43.18% to 96.21% by month 4 post-transplantation, accompanied by a decrease in glycated hemoglobin, an indicator of long-term systemic glucose levels at a non-diabetic level,” the scientists wrote.

As for the patient, a 25-year-old woman — well, she’s excited to enjoy some of her favorite foods again. “I enjoy eating everything — especially hotpot,” she told Nature.

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The study showed promising results

As one of the scientists involved in the stem cell transplantation, Peking University’s Deng Hongkui, told Nature, this wasn’t the only case where the team had given stem cells to a Type 1 diabetes patient.

Two other patients will reach a one-year milestone in November; once that’s taken place, the team that worked on this hope to expand the trials to more people to get a better sense of its efficacy. The results that follow could make a huge difference for people living with Type 1 diabetes.