RE: A New Method For Curing Type I Diabetes?
As a medical doctor and Type I diabetic myself, I really appreciate you bringing research like this to the Steem platform. My feelings: I think that people who have very poor control should look at this as a great opportunity.
In medicine you always have to weigh the potential harm with the potential benefit.
If someone has an A1C (essentially an approximation of a three-month average blood sugar) of 12, then immunosuppressive therapy is probably better than the poor blood sugar control.
However, if someone has an A1C below 7 and a much lower chance of diabetic complications, then why would someone want to subject themselves to immunosuppressive therapy, which could lead to cancer and infections?
In my opinion, the choice to get the transplant should be based on blood sugar control versus an easier life-style. For me, I have adapted to the diabetic lifestyle, and I don't even really have to think about it anymore. If we can prevent immunosuppressive therapy, then yes....that is the dream haha.
Yes and who knows in the future we may have means of reprogramming the immune system to reverse any autoimmunity and future transplants may involve the use of reprogrammed host cells. That way there would be no need for immunosuppression at all.
That is the dream man! Time will tell.
That is why I added my own research as to how beta cells can be regenerated. Maybe the combination of manual regeneration from fasting/refeeding and immunosuppressive therapy might reverse type 1. It certainly is shown to help with type 2.