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islet transplantation

can anyone explain how islet cell transplantation will hopefully cure type 1 diabetes, how the odds are currently and in the future to cure a reciepient and the side effects of the transplant?  I am saving the cord bloodstem cells from my unborn son, due in 5 weeks, with the hope that one day it will hold the cure for my 4 yr old daughter.  Thanks for your input all.
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Avatar universal
I would suggest getting on the JDRF website www.JDRF.org under Research, then Islet Transplantation for the latest information.  You can also read personal stories there under Legislative Issues, Children's Congress. Nothing conclusive about cord blood has been published yet. The best advice to all parents of kids with T1 is to keep them as healthy as possible, follow the JDRF website's updates on current research breakthroughs, and help us raise the funds to get the cure SOONER than later!
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Avatar universal
Well islet transplantation is very exciting. The JDRF site will have lots of information in the research section. I know that your body makes insulin in the beta cells which are located in the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas. Stem Cells (which are in the cord) are able to replicate any cell in the body that is why keeping the cord blood is getting so popular. When a  person has type 1 diabetes their pancreas no longer makes insulin because the body for whatever reason attacked its own cells (beta cells). This is called an autoimmune response. This is why diabetes is an autoimmune disease. Transplanting the islet cells will enable your body to produce insulin again and hopefully be the cure.  So far 257 people have been cured from diabetes with islet cell transplantation but some physicians feel that the side effects from the anti-rejection medications that one would need to take have worse side effects than the complications of diabetes. As of now islet cell transpantaion is not applicable to children. I would go and click on the JDRF link and look in the reasearch section for more detail.
Pumpgirl03
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Avatar universal
nervousmom,

First please let me wish you all and only good things for the remainder of your pregnancy and birth of your baby to come.  And moreso let me express my shared hope that we will be able to, sooner rather than later, cure Type 1 diabetes - for your daughter and all of our loved ones affected.

As Pumpgirl notes over 250 people have undergone islet transplantation, and most of them no longer need (or need less)daily insulin injections to survive.  It is, however, a bit of an overstatement to say they are truly "cured", though virtually everyone of the transplant patients I have spoken to tell me it has dramatically improved their quality of life.  The best description I've heard is that, with the current state-of the art, islet transplant gives recipients a "vacation" from their diabetes.

Right now, only the sickest adults with Type 1 are candidates for islet transplantation (people who have such severe hypoglycemia and hypoglycemic unawareness that they really can no longer function -- having frequent seizures, or passing out while driving, or being unable to work or care for thier children).  This is because the current state of the art requires the lifelong administration immunosuppressive drugs which increase a patients risk of infection and possibly tumors(and there are also not enough pancreases available to expand the use of this still experimental treatment).  Most islet transplant patients also need to take blood pressure medications and cholsterol lowering medications because of some of the immunosupression side effects.  So islet transplantation can, in the sickest adult patients -- by replacing the islet cells destroyed in Type 1 and thereby restoring some blood sugar-responsive insulin production -- dramatically improve quality of life, and even free patients from the need for insulin injections. But it is not, today, safe or appropriate for children, or most people with Type 1.

Hopefully, within the next number of years, with more research, we will find a way to do transplantation without immunosuppression. Also we will have to identify a way to create an unlimited supply of islet cells for transplantation so everyone -- even children -- might be candidates for this treatment (this is why JDRF has taken the lead in funding human stem cell research as well as research on transplantation without immunosuppression).  Even more excitingly, we may be able to find a way to stimulate the pancreases of people with Type 1 to re-grow thier own islet cells, while we inhibit the autoimmune reaction which caused the diabetes in the first place.  I believe this is also a possible result of some ongoing research (though it will probably be at least a few years before we will know if this is possible, but hopefully a breakthrough will make that time line shorter).

You mention your plan to save the chord blood from your to be born child.  I think this is a good thing.  BUT from what I have been told by some leading scientists, it is not likely (based on what we now know about the type of stem cells found in chord blood and what we know about how to turn stem cells into pancreatic islet cells) that in saving chord blood from your too be born child that that chord blood could be used as a source of islet cells for your daughter. There are other good reasons though to save chord blood and, as I have said, it is a good thing to do. And again, we know so little right now, really, about human stem cells, a breakthrough this year or next or the year after could change everything, and at that point, if we are so blessed as to witness such a breakthrough, you will be very glad you did save the chord blood.

I know this note may not be as hopeful re: islet transplantation as you may have wished.  But please do know there are many many people -- moms and dads, husbands and wives, grandparents, godparents, friends and neighbors, as well as an army of wonderful researchers, who, like you, spend countless sleepless nights hoping for a cure, thinking about what must be done to find a it, and then going out and doing all they can to make it happen.  We share the pain of seeing a loved-one suffer, but also the conviction that, together, we will find a cure.

Again, I wish you and your family all and only good things, and want to share with you the promise that every JDRF volunteer makes to someone they love -- we will continue to do all we can to find the cure, sooner rather than later.

Warmest Regards and Best Wishes,

srobert




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