Sweet Success

Experimental drug prevents progression of juvenile diabetes

By AFP

An experimental immunosuppressive drug taken for just two weeks has shown success in preventing the progression of juvenile diabetes, a study by US researchers in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded.

    Even taking a short-course of the drug, which has only mild side effects, appears to stem the progression of the disease by preventing sick cells from feeding on healthy, insulin-producing cells, said Robert Goldstein, the chief scientific officer for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, which funded the study. "The remarkable results reported in this study provide enormous hope for finding a cure for people with Type 1 diabetes," those whose immune systems attack insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas and destroy them, he said.

    The year-long clinical trial process for the immunosuppressive drug developed by Jeffrey Bluestone of the University of California-San Francisco Diabetes Center was directed by Kevan Herold of Columbia University in New York, both co-authors of the study.

    While the drug is not the first treatment to halt the progression of juvenile diabetes, it is the first proven success of a short-term therapy that specifically targets disease-causing T cells in the immune system, and minimizes potentially dangerous side effects including risks of infection, cancers or kidney failure.

    Israeli researchers in late 2001 published a study in The Lancet, announcing their own success in slowing the progress of diabetes with a similar experimental treatment. Researchers at the Weizmann Institute and Hadassah University in Jerusalem used a molecular treatment developed by Peptor pharmaceutical company to prevent the self-destruction of pancreatic cells over the course of 10 months of treatment. The vaccine proved effective in preventing diabetes that can cause blindness and kidney damage even when treated with insulin.

    Diabetes, which is characterized by chronic excess of sugar in the blood, afflicts more than 17 million people in the US and more than 150 million worldwide. One third of sufferers of the disease are unaware of their condition, according to a report released earlier this month by the American Diabetes Association.

    Type 1 diabetes, which accounts for one-tenth of the diabetes cases in the US, develops most often in children and young adults, but the disorder can appear at any age.

    Type 2 diabetes, which is increasingly more common in adults over age 55, can develop as a consequence of obesity or weight gain. About 80 percent of people with type 2 diabetes are overweight.

    According to a study published in February by the NEJM, adherence to a strict regimen of diet and exercise was proved to be more effective than medication in preventing the onset of the disease.