Diabetes Treatment Shows Promise

Ivanhoe Newswire
Friday, August 29, 2008; 4:15 AM

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Experiments using human blood cells have confirmed the mechanism behind a potential new treatment for people with type 1 diabetes and other autoimmune disorders.

Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston, have successfully shown that blocking a metabolic pathway that regulates the immune system can effectively eliminate immune cells that react against a patient's own tissue.

"Our studies in mice showed that we could selectively kill the defective autoimmune cells that were destroying insulin-producing islets," Denise Faustman, M.D., Ph.D., director of the MGH Immunobiology Laboratory, was quoted as saying.

This discovery supports the viability of a clinical trial that is already underway to test drugs that can produce the same effect.

Type 1 diabetes and other autoimmune disorders are caused when the body's immune cells mistakenly attack an individual's own cells.

SOURCE: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

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