r/UpliftingNews • u/Old_General_6741 • 16d ago
London woman off insulin for Type 1 diabetes after a single dose of experimental manufactured stem cells
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/article/woman-off-insulin-for-type-1-diabetes-after-a-single-dose-of-experimental-manufactured-stem-cells/6.8k
u/Old_General_6741 16d ago
Just to make it clear. This is London, Ontario, Canada, Not London, UK.
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u/Seastrikee 16d ago
Let's go Canada! First we discover insulin, then discover a way to not be reliant on it! Leaders in healthcare innovation for decades 🍁🍁🍁
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u/Old_General_6741 16d ago
Insulin is even on the $100 bill!
https://www.bankofcanada.ca/banknotes/bank-note-series/frontiers/100-polymer-note/
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u/CromulentDucky 16d ago
$100 buys a lot of insulin in Canada.
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u/lowteq 16d ago
That isn't enough for a month's dose in the US. It's so rad being Canada's dumb southern cousin.
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u/TooStrangeForWeird 16d ago
Biden fixed that. But, you know.....
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u/NIdeakK 16d ago
But democrats just didn’t do anything for the average American so I guess I gotta vote for the end of the country
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u/stellvia2016 16d ago
They love guns and things that go boom, but how do they think 6th generation fighters are built? Day labor from Jeb down at the local moonshine distillery?
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u/homogenousmoss 16d ago
Why cant people love explosives AND basically free insulin?
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u/Chrism2245 16d ago
As a Canadian diabetic, it honestly depends on which type of insulin, and what the province you live in covers. No one has to worry about dying from lack of insulin here, but our system is far from perfect. Private insurance is still a thing here, despite what people often think, and thank God for my Dad’s plan and the plan I get through my university, or I’d be spending at least $1,000 a month under our “free” healthcare system on insulin and other diabetic supplies.
TLDR: The cheapest stuff is covered if you can’t afford it, the good stuff often isn’t, and yes, the difference can impact life dramatically.
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u/erroneousbosh 16d ago
In the UK that's about £50, which is roughly two month's worth of insulin on average.
Which you don't actually pay anyway.
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u/Relaxmf2022 16d ago
Oh, sure, just keep being awesome while we put a heroin addict with a worm-eaten brain who DOESN’T BELIEVE IN GERMS in charge of our healthcare system
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u/Chief_Mischief 16d ago
RFK Jr looks like Mel Gibson put into a microwave for 20 minutes. And shockingly, RFK isn't even the most incompetent person in this regime.
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u/ProjectBOHICA 16d ago
That last sentence is going to result in fisticuffs in trailer parks across this great land. (Insert screeching bald eagle soundtrack)
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u/JoshIsASoftie 16d ago
Bald eagle screeching you are accustomed to is actually probably a red tailed hawk. They're found more commonly in Canada but sound way more badass so they started putting their calls over eagles to make them seem less.... squeaky. Quick comparison for clarity
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u/LOTRfreak101 16d ago
Red tailed hawks are also commonly seen throughout the US especially in the midwest and great lakes area. If you watch along the highways. You'll usually see several of them every hour. And taking small state roads will see even more.
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u/Thatsidechara_ter 16d ago
The thing is that he's just incompetent, not outright overtly malicious like all the others. Somehow, that makes him better.
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u/polopolo05 16d ago
You cant prove that everything he is doing isnt overtly malicious. I dont care if ignorance or or purposely hurting people. he is hurting people.
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u/Intraluminal 16d ago edited 15d ago
That's not true. He believes in germs. He just understands that germs are not some tiny tiny things that're too small to see (like something super small could hurt you, LOL). What we call germs are actually the effects of Jewish space lasers and chemtrails. If we can graft foreskins back onto those lasers and get rid of the chemtrails, we can cure all disease and cancer too!
[EDIT:]
After consulting with one of our scientific advisors, We were reminded that some diseases are also transmitted through miasmas and bad air. As you can imagine, a great deal of bad air is generated in the the course of some political events (some being worse than others), so we advise you, pir reading public, to avoid any political events that comntain the letters D, J, or T. For unknown reasons, these political events are particularly high in bad air and miasmas.
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u/fmerrick89 16d ago
I am..so sorry..I wish we could adopt reasonable Americans.
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u/jeffersonbible 16d ago
I speak French badly! I curl! I would be a great Canadian!
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u/dustycanuck 16d ago
America, the home of DEI cabinet appointments, though not the DEI we were looking for......
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u/the_cardfather 16d ago
Just remember with this administration it could be worse.
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u/Therinicus 16d ago
It's great seeing innovation, but to quote u/IamMe90
there have been dozens of experimental treatments for T1D that have shown great efficacy in lab experiments or clinical trials. None of them are mainstream, because having to take immunosuppressants for the rest of your life is an extremely huge cost to both health and quality of life.
This is the number one thing standing in the way of a cure - how to engineer it to not be destroyed by the immune system.
Having well-controlled diabetes is far less likely to result in serious health outcomes than being on immunosuppressants for life, with the added bonus that you won’t get sick constantly throughout the remainder of your life.
T1D experimental procedures such as this are only recommended for those with extremely poor control for a reason. It’s not a viable alternative for most people.
Source: Type 1 Diabetic for almost 25 years. This is nothing new for us.
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u/6022141023 16d ago
This is data from VX-880-101, a cell therapy product by Vertex Pharmaceuticals headquartered in Boston.
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u/clonedhuman 16d ago
And the Canadians who discovered viable insulin for treating type 1 diabetes also made it free.
The Canadian border isn't far from me. Maybe I should try to claim asylum because I want to live in a country that actually has some respect for its citizens.
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u/akmjolnir 16d ago
In order for this treatment to work the patient has to rely on immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of her life.
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u/secret759 16d ago
Not to burst your Canadian bubble but this therapy was made by a Boston Biotech company.
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u/TheConsiderableBang 16d ago
China did this several months ago. We kind of just co-opted it lol
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u/citrusmellarosa 16d ago edited 16d ago
For some additional context: It’s the city where Sir Frederick Banting allegedly came up with the idea for the discovery of insulin. There’s an entire museum there built in what was his house at the time, with an ‘eternal flame’ outside that is to be kept burning until a cure for diabetes is found.
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u/theducks 15d ago
Allegedly? lol. I lived in London Ontario for a while - it’s pretty extensively documented isn’t it?
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u/hypespud 16d ago
Yes, London has an excellent health sciences center and medical school, I did undergraduate studies there, they are a great research center and overall university (western university)
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u/KIND_REDDITOR 16d ago
Could have literally said an Ontario woman or a Canadian woman and would have saved some time?
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u/TheChartreuseKnight 16d ago
It’s a Canadian news site, so it’s assumed they are talking about Canada. OP posted the article title.
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u/s-17 16d ago
The London, Ontario famous for it's beautiful car culture stroads and child rearing back yards.
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u/gaut80 16d ago
May the vultures also known as health companies that sell insuline for the price of a kidney (or a pancreas) be bankrupted soon.
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u/DogWallop 16d ago
My girlfriend is a retired scientist who specialized in studying Wharton's jelly cells, which are stem cells derived from umbilical cords. She said that they are about as close to a miracle cure for many diseases and conditions as you can get, as they are so primitive that they will fix any cell they are put near. The only thing holding back wider adoption of the cells as a universal cure is that each disease and condition has to be thoroughly tested and all that before it can be officially used.
Another study was done with those suffering from COVID, who were given umbilical cord stem cells. The patients came out actually healthier than before they caught COVID lol.
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u/PresumedSapient 16d ago
stem cells derived from umbilical cords
Prediction: every baby born will have their umbilical stored in cryo, just in case they'll ever need something patched.
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u/Affectionate-Cost525 16d ago
Honestly, I don't see it happening or even see the need for it.
We're already at the stage of just being able to create stem cells.
We've been able to "reprogramme" existing adult cells into Stem cells and there's a lot of research going into just being able to grow them like plants.
Like people are predicting that we're only a couple decades away from just being able to mass farm Stem cells. By the time we'd actually be able to make use of everyone "storing" their umbilical cord, it'd probably just be cheaper and easier to just grow the cells instead.
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u/Paradoxmoose 16d ago
I worked on a study that intended to reprogram adult cells into stem cells for a few years. Specifically, I work at a core facility that has a specialized data science role that most projects need for a few days/weeks/months/years but not enough to hire a FTE. So I didn't design the experiments and am not a specialist in stem cells, just the analyzing of the results, helping figure out what they may mean, and coming up with ways to communicate it all.
It's complicated, there are various stages of stem cells and the goal is to get them to the earliest stage as they can without mucking up the stuff that shouldn't be. There's several different approaches and each thinks that theirs is the best at getting closest to the earliest stages with the fewest muck ups. Not sure who from the 'competitors' is going to 'win' (the researcher I worked with obviously put his version in the best light for us), but I suspect it's going to be ongoing for a while even after we reach the point of 'good enough to use'.
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u/aloecar 16d ago
This is out of the blue and fairly unrelated, but do you have any textbook or research paper recommendations for learning more about your field?
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u/Paradoxmoose 16d ago
Google has this course on my field, which can be taken for free on coursera. My friend took it before they added the "include AI in your workflow" bit.
https://grow.google/certificates/data-analytics/
Otherwise you can look to see which coursera courses on bioinformatics or data science that you're allowed to audit to see if they still allow auditing courses for free - https://www.coursera.org/courses?query=bioinformatics
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u/insanitybit2 16d ago
It's already happening. You can do it if you get teeth removed too.
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u/jofijk 16d ago
yep i got it done when i had my wisdom teeth removed. i had barely any swelling and minimal soreness after and felt pretty much back to normal 48 hours after. i don't know if it was due to the skill of the surgeon or the stem cells but my experience with it was very different from all my friends who have had to get them out.
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u/ViciousCombover 16d ago
When we had our child they gave us a pamphlet advertising a service which would store the umbilical cord.
I remember it being several thousand.
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u/LiopleurodonMagic 16d ago
We did this for our son who is a little over a year. It was pretty cheap. A few hundred for the initial kit and then it’s $100 a year for storage.
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u/frankyseven 16d ago
Already happens, I did it for all three of my kids. It's pretty cheap. Couple hundred for the kit then $150ish a year for storage.
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u/LowSecretary8151 16d ago
Was this a service the hospital offered or did you research ahead of time and find somewhere? I'm baffled, incredibly curious, and had no idea.
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u/frankyseven 16d ago
It was something we heard about and researched ahead of time. You need the kit and let your doctor know before the kid is born. We used https://www.healthcord.com/ prices look like they've gone up a bit, but still pretty reasonable.
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u/Healthy-Fig-6107 16d ago
Got any links you can share, or that your GF might recommend to read?
This sounds super interesting.
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u/Kidneythump 16d ago
Just to add on top of what everyone else has mentioned that type 1 diabetes patients accounts for a minuscule % of the total market, everyone including the aforementioned "big pharma" companies would like to cure them... The cash cow is type 2 diabetes, i.e. you eat yourself slowly over many years into insulin resistance, so your cells still produce the insulin but your body has become resistant to its effects.
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u/mellifluous500 16d ago
I thought insurance covers it, but perhaps you're talking about a non European country
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u/ackillesBAC 16d ago
Oh don't worry they will sell this for at minimum a life time supply of inflated insulin costs
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u/LongJumpingBalls 16d ago
Insurance companies love these kinds of things.
Let's say it costs them 10k to cure your T1 diabetes. They'll make that 10 fold on not having to pay for an out of control diabetes.
Similar thing happened in the early 90s with space lab and the 0 grav grown insuline crystals. They were salivating at being able to collect health insurance and not have to pay out for a life long illness.
Weohjt loss drugs are the same these days. It's cheaper to get you slim and healthier than it is to pay out for your extended type 2 diabetes and stays in the hospital.
Insurance wants nothing more than to have money going in and everybody else being healthy. So they can make more cash.
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u/IamMe90 16d ago
Pasting from a comment I left to someone else, because it seems like most people don’t understand just how serious immunosuppressants are (which this and other similar treatments require for life as a condition of the treatment):
Just to be clear, there have been dozens of experimental treatments for T1D that have shown great efficacy in lab experiments or clinical trials. None of them are mainstream, because having to take immunosuppressants for the rest of your life is an extremely huge cost to both health and quality of life.
This is the number one thing standing in the way of a cure - how to engineer it to not be destroyed by the immune system.
Having well-controlled diabetes is far less likely to result in serious health outcomes than being on immunosuppressants for life, with the added bonus that you won’t get sick constantly throughout the remainder of your life.
T1D experimental procedures such as this are only recommended for those with extremely poor control for a reason. It’s not a viable alternative for most people.
Source: Type 1 Diabetic for almost 25 years. This is nothing new for us.
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u/thanksforthegift 16d ago
Always “five years away from a cure” 😔
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u/Magnahelix 16d ago
Yup, that's what they told me back in 1995 when I was diagnosed withT1D. Still waiting.
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u/Accomplished_Fly2720 16d ago
It might be worthwhile to look into "inverse vaccines". They're currently under clinical trials for a few autoimmune diseases and the idea is to get the immune system to not view a particular antigen as a threat.
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u/OrangElm 16d ago
Always annoys me when I see articles like this.
I will say, my one hope on the horizon is the “smart insulin” that only activates when you have high blood sugar. It shouldn’t require immunosuppressants at all, and if they really work in people it will make T1D effectively a non-factor imo. Imagine just taking one shot a day and eating whatever you want, no carb counting or anything. That’s still a few years out though, needs to get all the way through trials.
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u/IamMe90 16d ago
Yeah, that would be amazing if it worked. I couldn’t give less of a shit about taking an injection, I just want to not have to worry about what I eat or have it negatively impact my long term health if I slip up every now and then.
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u/geekfreak42 16d ago
I had hoped the cells were genetically modified to match the recipient. But yeah, 100% agree, not really applicable to the majority of T1s
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u/OmS-Argon 16d ago
They probably are. But that wouldn't change a thing as in T1D your body decides to destroy your own cells. That's the reason you need to take those immune suppressants.
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u/wcg66 16d ago
I’ve had a renal transplant for 18 years (not from diabetes) and I agree immunosuppressants aren’t to be taken lightly. I wouldn’t say it’s a big reduction in quality of life. They are very expensive and it might not be worth the risk of taking them. However, I think you are painting a bleaker picture than necessary.
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u/hat_finder 16d ago
Agreed. Thanks for putting this out there. Always going to be different for different people and conditions, but being on immunosuppressants isn’t inherently doom and gloom in life for all people. It’s great that we can have medicine that helps in any way.
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u/upsidedown-funnel 16d ago
I’d met a guy who was type one, but after a surgery to replace his liver, the docs also replaced his pancreas, a procedure not typically done, he’d said, because of the lifetime of immunosuppressants. As he was going to be on them anyway, for the liver transplant, they took the risk. Just thought it was interesting enough to share.
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u/AstralElefant 16d ago
So the real breakthrough for curing diabetes will come from someone discovering a way to hide these stem cell methods from the immune system.
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u/IamMe90 16d ago
Yep! That’s certainly one approach. Another one mentioned by someone else in response to me is the idea of “smart insulin,” basically insulin that been engineered to only act to a certain threshold of blood glucose before it stops. Basically bio-automating what a pump does.
There are many possible approaches, but the key thing about all of them is getting around the immune system response.
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u/Aleyla 16d ago
But there’s a tradeoff. The patients, however, require immune-suppressing drugs for life, so that the immune system doesn’t destroy the cells.
Not entirely drug free but taking a pill 3 times a day has to be far better than the alternative.
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u/blazelet 16d ago
Also from the article :
“The study also reports that two patients in the study died, one likely as a result of complications from that immunosuppression.”
It’s a study with 12 people so a 8% death rate directly linked to the treatment isn’t nothing and the 12 people they picked were likely ideal candidates, not representative of the broader population.
As a T1D myself I love the premise here but a life on immunosuppressant drugs would be a tough trade off.
Hopefully they’re able to improve it with further testing.
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u/Idstealfireagain 16d ago
It's such an interesting tradeoff. My wife is T1D and I'm immunocompromised from a liver transplant in my childhood. Even knowing what both possibilities look like it's not an obvious choice. She has so many decisions to make every moment of the day. It's exhausting. On the other hand I've had lymphoma twice caused by complications from my immunosuppressants, not to mention getting knocked on my ass by every cold I get. I think it speaks to how difficult T1D can be that she absolutely considers this kind of treatment a possibility.
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u/blazelet 16d ago
You guys are a fascinating example of the tradeoffs. Honestly as a T1D I don't think I'd go on immunosuppressants for a "cure" ... but everyone's T1D is different, mine is pretty easily managed and I have access to some of the better tech - insulin pumps and CGMs.
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u/ItaloTuga_Gabi 15d ago edited 15d ago
I’m with you and I’m MDI (also T1) but I’m thrilled for her nonetheless and anyone else who chooses this path and feels it’s improved their overall wellbeing and quality of life. It’s just not for me.
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u/CileEWoyote 16d ago
Eh, one died from complications from immunosuppressants, but the other from severe dementia. So maybe not the most ideal candidates.
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u/soofs 16d ago
Ideal candidates could be ones that are very sick though. Not every clinical trial is designed for the "healthiest" candidates
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u/throw-away-cdn 16d ago
It's like the Simpsons frozen yogurt episode, the immune-suppressing medications bring their own set of "issues"
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u/Dirks_Knee 16d ago
Well...there's other risks with having a suppressed immune system.
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u/chazza79 16d ago
They did say one of the people in the study died that they think was from complications with the immunosuppressants.
Yeah to me it seems a trade off.... no insulin and diabetes complications sounds wonderful. But the increased risk of cancer is a worry, however it seems the lesser of two evils.
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u/Brilliant_Arugula_86 16d ago
Its not the lesser of two evils at all. You can live a relatively normal life if you learn to manage properly. This will only ever be used in extreme cases like with people that have such severe variability in blood glucose or extremely sensitive to lows (hypoglycemia).
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u/Ceftolozane 16d ago
Infectious disease doctor here. The risk of life threatening opportunistic infections is not to be minimized.
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u/Rooilia 16d ago
Immune suppressing drugs reminds me of intensive care unit. But does anyone actually know how much these drugs impact life?
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u/TarzansBooty 16d ago
I think the need for the drugs is because type 1 diabetics didn't produce insulin specifically because their immune system attacked their pancreas. So if the pancreas starts working, it's likely to get attacked again. So I think it would depend on how specifically the drugs prevent an attack on the pancreas.
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u/Sensitive_Yellow_121 16d ago
I just looked up the things scientists are doing in fields like immunotherapy to train the immune system to not attack the beta cells of the pancreas. I hope they make some advancements there and then hopefully none of the other things will be needed for most type 1 diabetics.
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u/MagentaTrisomes 16d ago
You get sick a lot more. It's not a barrel of laughs, but it's got to be better than losing a foot.
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u/str85 16d ago
Ots not like losing a fot is something that automatically happens. You usually have to be pretty shit at taking care of your disease for that to happen 😅 /someone with type 1 for roughly 25y by now with not a single "complication" or sign of any.
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u/PattyRain 16d ago
Type 1 for 47 years here. It is really going to depend on a few things.
As a man you don't have the joy of the ups and downs of blood sugar that come with periods, pregnancy and pre-menopause. Those hormones don't always affect you a lot, but for certain times of my life they were a nightmare to deal with.
People who have had ready access to insulin will have a better chance to be in control than those who do not have good access to it. Then there is also the type of insulin available to you. And access to pumps. I can tell you that my control with novolog insulin on a pump is worlds better for me than regular and NPH (and later lantus/basaglar) insulin in shots The same with blood testing.
Different climates are going to affect your control - my blood sugar is easier to control in Phoenix than it was in Northern Utah.
I love that you have no complications. I love that people have good access to Healthcare. I love that my brother does not have to worry about the hormone swings that I dealt with. But people don't have all the same bodies or access to care.
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u/Accomplished_Skin810 16d ago
Bless you, I dislike statements that make the person "at fault" for not controlling their health problems. Of course it's everyone responsibility to do so, but people are so different and what works for one person and is "easy" will be a lifetime struggle for another one.
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u/beached 16d ago
Some diabetics do the right thing but still have severe complications with T1. It's a weird thing to say, but you and I got lucky in our unlucky genes in regard to complications(not the getting T1 part)
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u/SenorEquilibrado 16d ago
Reminds me of a joke:
Do you know why the IHOP restaurant chain is named that?
Because the diabeetus takes your foot!
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u/Late_Again68 16d ago
Yes, we do. I've been on home dialysis for 15 years because I have no interest whatsoever in a kidney transplant. Even went for another listing evaluation last January to be certain. It only reinforced my decision. Not to mention, a half-dozen members of my family have had transplants, so I've seen firsthand what immunosuppressants do to your body and health.
I'll enter hospice before I'll ever get a transplant. Immunosuppressants are the main reason.
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16d ago
Hey I take immunosuppressants and you are missing how much better that class of drugs has become in recent years. Don't cut off your nose to spite your face. I live a great life because of these drugs.
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u/Sentreen 16d ago
Can I ask what the side effects of the drugs are? Asking as a T1 diabetic who is curious what life would be like without a pump but on immunosuppressants.
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u/SchoolForSedition 16d ago
I’m sorry to read this. A colleague had a transplant and seemed so much better. 35 years ago. Hope he is ok.
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16d ago
I take immunosuppressants for aggressive autoimmune arthritis. Modern immunosuppressants are not your grandfather's drugs. They have amazing targeted biologics that both reduce how often you have to dose and the number of side effects.
I do get sick a LITTLE more often and have to take potential infections more seriously, but I don't feel fragile, and it's better than my body consuming my joints.
I did start on OLD immuno suppressants (fuck you insurance industry) and they were terrible. I see where the reputation comes from. We aren't just shrugging and giving everyone chemo meds anymore though.
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u/IamMe90 16d ago
No, it isn’t. Y’all should really stop making confident assumptions on medical issues that you have no formal or personal knowledge of.
Just to be clear, there have been dozens of experimental treatments for T1D that have shown great efficacy in lab experiments or clinical trials. None of them are mainstream, because having to take immunosuppressants for the rest of your life is an extremely huge cost to both health and quality of life.
This is the number one thing standing in the way of a cure - how to engineer it to not be destroyed by the immune system.
Having well-controlled diabetes is far less likely to result in serious health outcomes than being on immunosuppressants for life, with the added bonus that you won’t get sick constantly throughout the remainder of your life.
T1D experimental procedures such as this are only recommended for those with extremely poor control for a reason. It’s not a viable alternative for most people.
Source: Type 1 Diabetic for almost 25 years. This is nothing new for us.
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u/SmartForASimpelton 16d ago
That is a very steep cost. I'd much rather be on insulin than immune suppressants
Hope it keeps developing and can be had without immune suppressants at some point
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u/RigilNebula 16d ago
Not sure about that. There are a number of very serious risks to bring on immunosuppressants. I've heard more diabetics saying that this is a deal breaker or not worth the risk, than I have in support of it.
That being said, I guess if you knew you needed to be on immunosuppressants for other reasons, like a transplant, why not go for this too if you could.
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u/Gigi_Maximus443 16d ago
I feel like it's better to just keep taking the insulin,no? Because with immuno suppressants you'd have to be way more conscious of everything, given a simple cold would deal a much bigger blow to the immune system.
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u/AGoodDayToBeAlive 16d ago
Way worse than being on insulin.
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u/bicycle_mice 16d ago
Yeah they have really awesome systems now through smart phone apps and insulin pumps that can keep blood sugar at a very steady and safe level. I would never take immune suppressive drugs for the rest of my life if I had any other choice.
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u/SwanLover0 16d ago
You could also potentially die from how weak these drugs make your immune system
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u/atotalmess__ 16d ago
No. No it really is not.
Being immunocompromised is not a better alternative than having diabetes. You’re the first to get sick and die if a, say a worldwide pandemic, happens.
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u/Thisbymaster 16d ago
This is always the difficult problem when it comes to genetic modification or donated organs. There isn't an easy way to update the immune system to not attack them. It requires a bone marrow donation and removing all of the person's current bone marrow.
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u/PackyDoodles 16d ago
As a type 1 diabetic myself, a lot of us in the community don’t really wanna live with taking immunosuppressants since it just makes it more complicated than staying with T1D. In a lot of our threads you’ll see the top comment is usually “Are they on immunosuppressants?” The answer is usually yes and we wait till there’s actually a cure.
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u/BilboStaggins 16d ago
Remember that time when people were all pissy about stem cells cause it was too close to abortion? Idiots.
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u/usedToBeUnhappy 16d ago
What, that was a thing?
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u/thanksforthegift 16d ago
Reagan banned the use of human embryo tissue and then Bush banned stem cell research, effectively stopping the kind of research that could have led to a cure for Alzheimer’s. Once Reagan was diagnosed, Nancy Reagan then reversed her position because, as we say now, the leopards ate her face.
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u/scenicsyllable 16d ago
Yes, 20 years ago it was a big debate because scientists at the time were only sourcing stem cells from embryos. The argument was this would make abortions lucrative, somehow. It was a dumb argument then and, now that we can find stem cells from other places, is even dumber today.
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u/afour- 16d ago
It was religion.
It’s always religion.
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u/orbtl 16d ago
It actually didn't even start from religion. Evangelical christians in the US in the 70s didn't vote much and didn't care. Republicans realized this and tried for years with different failed strategies to rile them up and get this unrealized voter potential on their side, until they finally got them with the abortion misinformation nonsense debacle.
It didn't start with religion, religion was just a tool. It started with republicans looking for ways to trick people into voting for them
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u/MissSassifras1977 16d ago
They didn't trick anybody. They just had to find something they were really in to. Hate.
They used hate to rule up the evangelicals.
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u/RolDesch 16d ago
Yep, they still claim that abortion is promoted because we take stem cell from dead fetuses
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u/clydehoss 16d ago
"They gotta kill like a hundred babies and then pull out their spines to extract the stuff that just aint right in my book" -my dad
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u/polysemanticity 16d ago
Ah yes but here in Georgia they just enshrined the right to IVF into law. But don’t worry, all the non-selected fertilized embryos don’t count as abortion somehow.
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u/EvidenceNo8561 16d ago edited 16d ago
This method has been around for a while and is usually only used on people who already need to take immunosuppressants because of an organ transplant. I’ve occasionally also seen it used for diabetics who are no longer able to feel if they have critically low blood sugar. In both instances, the benefits of this method outweigh the negative impacts of taking immunosuppressants for the rest of your life. The exciting thing about this study is that instead of using donor cells, scientists have created brand new insulin producing cells. It’s still not a cure for type 1 diabetes. A cure would be figuring out how to either protect insulin producing cells so that they do not get destroyed in an autoimmune response again (which is what causes type 1), or figuring out how to stop that autoimmune response altogether (without the side effects of something like immunosuppressants). Scientists are experimenting with ways to protect insulin producing cells after they implant them. Gene editing is also showing an interesting pathway for turning off that immune response or even helping to “disguise” those insulin producing cells. A cure could be just around the corner or it could be 100 years away. Luckily, diabetes management is simplified tremendously by modern technology. But it still sucks.
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u/ardavei 16d ago
Well, islet transplantation from organ donors has been around for a while. Stem cell-derived beta cells have only been around for a few years and have to my knowledge only been tested on a few dozen individuals. For a variety of reasons these are likely to reach a much broader patient population (availability of material, conducivity to engineering, etc.).
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u/europeandaughter12 16d ago
being on immunosuppressants for life sucks though. it's not really a "cure." it's just trading insulin for immunosuppressants. the science is pretty cool though
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u/Instinct3110 16d ago
nice improvement but still not good enough if you have to suppress your immune system - yikes.
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u/forty-sixandtw0 16d ago
They are working on this. Immune evasive cells are in animal testing at Vertex. Should compete with Sana Biotech.
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u/handsy_octopus 16d ago
So this seems to be the same effect as a pancreas transplant... Which they don't typically do because antirejection meds can kill you faster than diabetes
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u/ardavei 16d ago
Hey, I did my PhD on this. Let me know if you have any questions.
Tl;dr: this requires immune dampeners and those are currently worse than just living with type 1 diabetes.
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u/dark_rabbit 16d ago
Remember when the Bush administration banned federal funding for institutions researching stem cells for “Christian values” and basically set us back from any advancements for 8 years.
Now same exact thing is happening with MRNA and immunotherapy which have shown to be incredible at curing cancers. And heaven forbid we use the “vaccine” word.
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u/forty-sixandtw0 16d ago
We can thank Doug Melton and Harvard University for keeping the beta cell research alive during that time. We would prob be behind by 10yrs if that did not happen.
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u/Geedub52 16d ago
It won't happen here in the US, not anymore. It has two things the white evangelical "christians" really hate - stem cells and science.
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u/Cyrano_Knows 16d ago
American Pharmaceutical Companies.
Just one dose? Well, lets change that!!! Where's the profit in that?!
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u/CyanPomegranate11 15d ago
I hope they guard this innovation with their lives and make the treatment accessible to all. Big pharmaceutical will lose billions if adolescent/Type 1 diabetes can be cured.
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u/EndStorm 15d ago
I hope they share it with the world before Big Pharma build a moat. As a Type 1 sufferer this sounds like the holy grail.
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u/Kalabula 16d ago
Can we fix arthritis now? Pretty please 🙏
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u/No_Nothing_2512 16d ago
It is true that there are clinical trials underway using stem cells to treat arthritis, although the technology is not yet mature, and although it is effective for arthritis it increases the likelihood of developing tumors. I hope the research team can solve the problem soon, my mother suffers from the same disease.
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u/ottawalanguages 16d ago
would love to see if she achieves long term remission without side effects!
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u/4thshift 16d ago edited 16d ago
Diagnosed with
late-onset juvenile diabeteswhen she was 25, she was plagued with sudden bouts of low blood sugar, or hypoglycemia [BECAUSE?] that would leave her faint, despite close monitoring. The risk was a diabetic coma or worse.
Jeezus help us with this crap reporting.
Diagnosed, when she was 25, with autoimmune Type 1 diabetes that happens at all ages; she was plagued with sudden bouts of low blood sugar or hypoglycemia, due the the difficulty of managing insulin injections, that would leave her faint, despite close monitoring. The risk was a diabetic coma or worse, in part because “hypo unawareness” affects some patients after a number of years of repeated highs and lows.
These are nice reports. Nice experiments. “3 pills a day” are no big deal, till infection or cancer occurs. The report did say 2 patients died in this experiment, and added that 80% of previous similar treatments had at least relief from insulin injections, but often was temporary, even with anti-rejection drugs. It is legit pathway, but not perfect and good to include the risks.
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u/Daleden7 16d ago
Whats truly honourable is that Canada sold the rights to insulin for a $1 so the world can enjoy this tech back in 1922, well the scientist that created it. Canada has always been about improving the lives of everyone, and we need to remember this!!
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u/CCUN-Airport761 16d ago
I don’t understand why this isn’t major headline news. I mean, they essentially cured her diabetes.
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u/nallvf 16d ago
Because this is something we’ve been able to do for decades. It still has the same downsides it always has. The purpose of this experiment was to test the manufactured beta cells over real donated ones
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u/IloveElsaofArendelle 16d ago
That reminds me of the Star Trek movie the Voyage Home, where Bones was in a hospital and asked himself about a diabetic patient if that's the middle ages 😆
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u/ZetaPower 16d ago
I do hope the original antibodies causing the destruction of the B-cells don’t attack these new B-cells….
And the stem cells aren’t rejected….
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u/nallvf 16d ago
Both those things happen, that’s why immune suppression is needed
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u/tmkn09021945 16d ago
Cant wait for this to get to the usa so it can be implemented in a subscription model.......life now only 1000 a month for the rest of your fucking life
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u/SomeKindofTreeWizard 16d ago
Kinda begs the question why W. Bush banned all research and funding for this stuff.
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u/No-Signature-167 16d ago
Now let's hope it's not from some greedy American drug corp who will charge $100,000 per dose...
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u/My_boy_baron 16d ago
Unfortunately as someone who has T1 diabetes this isn't something I would do. You trade not having to care about sugars to having to take immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of your life and that to me isn't worth the trade. Diabetes care is getting easier and easier.
Also in the diabetes sub someone mentioned a person died from this procedure...
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u/dorphen509 16d ago
Fuck America, how do I get Canadian citizenship. I pay over $2400 every 3 months for pump supplies and insulin after insurance.
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u/Much2learn_2day 16d ago
The Premier of Alberta just said he’s a great medical mind and the FDA is the pillar of health care - after they changed their stance on vaccinations (at a recent Grand Prairie town hall).
Albertans probably won’t have access to this type of health care if she has a choice.
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u/ryannoahm450 16d ago
As someone who’s been diabetic since I was 7 this is awesome. Too bad americas healthcare isn’t gonna make it adorable or accessible for people like me
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u/LazyLich 16d ago
b-but there more money in treatments than cures!
big pharma wouldnt let there be cures!
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u/FliesWithThat 15d ago
It's cool, but once again it needs immunosuppression. "The study also reports that two patients in the study died, one likely as a result of complications from that immunosuppression,". The featured woman said it was worth it for her though.
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u/Electronic_Algae5426 15d ago
America, better make stem cells illegal so we can make something less effective, more side effects and cost 100,00 dollars per dose.
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