what we're reading
A More Detailed Look at Stem-Cell Therapy for Diabetes
In mid-April, the popular press was full of reports on an exciting new paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Society on a stem-cell treatment for type 1 diabetes.
The phrase “stem cell research” has so many connotations that we thought it was worth taking a more detailed look at what exactly was in this widely-acclaimed paper. Published by Dr. Julio Voltarelli and colleagues from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, it reported the results from a small 15-patient trial that tested a method called autologous nonmyeloablative hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (AHSCT) for the treatment of new type 1 patients. The method is a complex three-step procedure that is already used to treat other autoimmune diseases like sclerosis, arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and lupus:
Two Leading Endocrinologists Debate the Merits of Inhaled Insulin
Two well-known endocrinologists debated the merits of inhaled insulin in the February edition of Diabetes Care. Dr. William Cefalu, a professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University, believes that the convenience of inhaled insulin will lead better adherence to doctors’ orders and to improved glucose control. But Dr. David Nathan, director of the Diabetes Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, contends that inhaled insulin causes substandard glucose control, which makes him worry that patients will further sacrifice outcomes for the sake of convenience.
