neilios

I hate to hype these things when I haven’t pulled the original research article, yet, but this looks interesting.

Certain types of diabetes are the result of the immune system attacking and killing cells in the pancreas that supply insulin to the body. Based on the article, researchers were able to replace the tissue with (presumably adult) stem cells culled from the blood of the patients themselves.

I suspect that there are still open questions to be answered, such as whether the same autoimmune effects that caused the first round of disease will kill the new tissue or if immunosuppressants will have to be taken for life. I’m sure that the discussion in JAMA is more enlightening, but I’m tired and this looked cool enough to share. Good night.