Source: UPI Health News – Miami
A diabetic woman no longer needs to take daily medicine after she received a stem cell transplant.
Wendy Peacock was first diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 17, according to the Miami Herald newspaper. Until then, a daily insulin injection had helped control the amount of sugar (or glucose) in her blood.
Ms. Peacock, who is now 43, received the stem cells in mid-August 2015 in a “minimally invasive procedure” at the University of Miami – Miller School of Medicine in Florida. Doctors called the operation simple and said Ms. Peacock recovered quickly.
After the operation, her body started producing insulin naturally.
Ms. Peacock “is now completely off insulin,” one of her doctors said.
“These are the best results we’ve seen,” said Dr. Camillo Ricordi, director of the Cell Transplant Center at the Diabetes Research Center in Florida.
“If these results can be confirmed, this can be the beginning of a new era” said Dr. Ricordi. If other doctors study the results and confirm the outcome, the procedure could become available to other diabetics.
Ms. Peacock says her life has changed dramatically as a result of the procedure. Before the procedure, Ms. Peacock was unable to sense when her blood glucose dropped dangerously. Low glucose can make a person confused or unconscious. It may even lead to death.
“As any type 1 diabetic knows, you live on a very structured schedule,” Ms. Peacock explained.
“I do a mental checklist every day in my head … glucose tabs, food, glucometer, and then I stop and say, ‘WOW! I don’t have to plan that anymore.”
Asians will find the medical news encouraging. Studies show that Asians are at higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes when compared with people of European ancestry. That’s according to the Asian Diabetes Prevention Initiative at Harvard University in Massachusetts.
Asian populations have fewer overweight and obese people than people in the West but they have a higher percentage of people with diabetes. Currently, 60 percent of the world’s diabetic population is Asian, according to the Initiative’s website.
