Interesting development in medicine...

There have been many in my family who have been ravaged by diabetes, up to and including lost limbs and death itself. That's why I'm heartened by this news:

Microspheres carrying targeted nucleic acid molecules fabricated in the laboratory have been shown to prevent and even reverse new-onset cases of type 1 diabetes in animal models. The results of these studies were reported by diabetes researchers at the John G. Rangos Sr. Research Center at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC and Baxter Healthcare Corporation.

In a research study at Children's Hospital, the scientists injected the microspheres under the skin near the pancreas of mice with autoimmune diabetes. The microspheres were then captured by white blood cells known as dendritic cells which released the nucleic acid molecules within the dendritic cells. The released molecules reprogrammed these cells, and then migrated to the pancreas. There, they turned off the immune system attack on insulin-producing beta cells. Within weeks, the diabetic mice were producing insulin again with reduced blood glucose levels.

Results of the microsphere study are published in the June issue of Diabetes, the journal of the American Diabetes Association.

My maternal grandmother had Type I diabetes, and swore up and down that she was cured by a medicine developed by her family doctor, who, as the story goes, took the secret of the concoction with him when he died. That was probably 70 years ago. It's good to see that such hope again arises in the horizon.