Is diabetes going to be a disease that can finally be treated? This is because another type-1 diabetic patient has been successfully restored using stem cell treatment in China. After receiving a bone marrow transplant procedure, a 25-year-old woman who had diabetes for 11 years no longer needed insulin injections for a year.
The treatment was developed by scientists from Tianjin First Central Hospital, Peking University, Changping Laboratory and Hangzhou Reprogenix Bioscience. They take the patient's adipose tissue which is then transformed into stem cells. It is then transformed into islet cells before being transplanted into the patient's abdominal muscles.
Islet cells are responsible for producing insulin in the human body. The need for daily insulin injections begins to decrease after two weeks before no longer being needed after 75 days. The patient's body produced its own insulin again and he was successfully treated.
What makes the success of this Chinese scientist unique is that the islet cells were transplanted into the abdominal muscles instead of the patient's liver as was done on the first human recovered from diabetes three years ago in the United States. Transplantation to the abdominal muscles is easier than to the liver because it does not require complicated surgery. The study was published in the journal Cell.