Poorva Chavan
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Written By: Poorva Chavan | Updated : February 1, 2016 11:11 AM IST
Type 1 diabetes also called a juvenile diabetes is one of the most common diseases that affects nearly five lakh children under the age of 15. It's a lifelong condition in which the body stops producing insulin as a result of which blood glucose levels keep on fluctuating. The condition can be controlled with medication but till now there's no cure for it. But now scientists from Harvard and MIT have claimed that they have found a possible cure for type 1 diabetes in insulin-producing cells generated from stem cells. (Read: Can Type 1 diabetes be reversed?)
In type 1 diabetes the body's immune system produces antibodies that attack the insulin-producing cells and destroys them. Doug Melton who led the research generated human islet cells from human stem cells which were then transplanted into mice. These cells then immediately started producing insulin. The team was able to demonstrate that they could prevent the cells from being attacked by the body's own immune system. With the help of these cells, the scientists were able to halt the diabetic condition for six months. They are now working to replicate the result in human with type 1 diabetes. (Read: Forget about apps, now use your smartphone to fight type 1 diabetes)
Senior author of the study Daniel Anderson said that they are now focussing on the improving and advancing the technique . If the study is replicated in humans then one day people with type 1 diabetes will be free from lifelong insulin injections.
The findings are published in the journals Nature Medicine and Nature Biotechnology.
Image source: Getty Images
