Stem cells may delay onset of Type 1 diabetes

With a first name like hers, it seems fitting that Deb Jeszewski sells Little Debbie Snack Cakes for a living.

But the irony is she can't really eat them because she has type 1 diabetes.

Jeszewski, of Lino Lakes, says, "It affects everything I do.

Before I go into a meeting, before an interview I have to check my blood sugar."

She also has to give herself insulin injections. So she's excited about new research that shows there could now be a way to keep newly diagnosed type 1 diabetics free from insulin injections for up to four years.

And it involves the patients' own stem cells.

The study is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago removed the stem cells of study participants, treated them and then injected them back into the patient.

Study author, Dr. Richard Burt says, "Just to be able to take someone and have them insulin-free with normal blood sugars on no medications for many years in the first attempt, you know, is a step forward."

Endocrinologist Dr. J. Michael Gonzalez-Campoy of the Minnesota Center for Obesity, Metabolism and Endocrinology (MNCOME) in Eagan says the stem cell therapy is only for newly diagnosed type 1 diabetics whose immune systems have not yet destroyed all of their insulin producing beta cells.

He says, "It's taking away the old immune system that has a memory to attack the beta cells in the pancreas and putting in stem cells that basically give that whole person a new immune system that might not know that it has to attack those beta cells.

So whatever beta cells are left, we protect them." That allowed study participants to continue to produce their own insulin, delaying full blown diabetes one to four years.

While it wouldn't help Jeszewski who has had diabetes for 20 years, she welcomes any research.

She says, "Anything that can help me or anybody else put off the long term effects of diabetes would be a promising thing." Doctor Gonzalez-Campoy says its conceivable that one day, for some patients, multiple treatments of stem cell therapy could possibly delay the onset of type 1 diabetes indefinitely.

But, he says, a lot of research has yet to be done.

By Renee Tessman, KARE 11 News
(Copyright 2009 by KARE. All Rights Reserved.)