By David Prentice of the FRCBlog
October 15, 2010

Adult stem cells have already shown amazing progress treating Type I (juvenile) diabetes, as Dr. Jean Peduzzi Nelson noted in her September Senate testimony. As reported in 2009 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 20 of 23 patients became insulin-independent after treatment with their own bone marrow adult stem cells. The authors note in the paper that this adult stem cell treatment “remains the only treatment capable of reversing type 1 diabetes in humans.” Their initial success with this adult stem cell treatment had been published in 2007; some patients are still insulin-independent.

Jaider Abbud, a young dental surgeon in Brazil, is one of the first patients ever to be treated for Type I Diabetes using adult stem cells (Jaider, on the right, is pictured with Dr. Julio Voltarelli, one of the doctors who treated him.) He was testing his blood and taking multiple insulin shots every day. In a talk he gave on Capitol Hill in 2007, a year after his treatment, Jaider described his diagnosis and life with juvenile diabetes, and how he hadn’t taken insulin or any medication since receiving his adult stem cell transplant.