Interesting Diabetes breakthrough?
From the
Canadian Broadcasting Company:
Canadian scientists reverse diabetes in mice
Researchers working on a "breakthrough" discovery that identifies the role of pain nerves in the cells that produce insulin have prevented and reversed diabetes in mice.
The work "led us to fundamentally new insights into the mechanisms of this disease," Dr. Michael Salter, co-principal investigator, said in a release Thursday that characterized the findings as a breakthrough.
Researchers concluded that the pain receptors don't secrete enough neuropeptides — chemical elements found in the brain — to keep the pancreatic islets, which produce insulin, working normally. Without insulin, humans die, and even the current replacement therapies cannot prevent side effects, such as heart attack, blindness, stroke, loss of limbs and kidney failure.
But by supplying neuropeptides to diabetes-prone mice, "the research group learned how to treat the abnormality … and even reversed established diabetes," without bad side effects, the release said.
"The major discovery was that removal of sensory neurons expressing the receptor TRPV1 neurons in NOD (non-obese diabetic) mice prevented islet cell inflammation and diabetes in most animals," Salter said.
If they can successfully bring this over from genetically tailored research mice to the general human population, this will be an incredible bit of work. Nobel for Medicine and all that...
It will be interesting if this happens, if other researchers start looking at similar pathways to other regulatory problems.
Other examples certainly exist --
Helicobacter pylori and Ulcers and
Toxoplasma gondii and Schizophrenia
Posted by DaveH at December 15, 2006 9:42 PM