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| Cure for
diabetes being pursued:
If your doctor recently diagnosed you with diabetes,
you're one of nearly 16 million people in the United
States -- nearly one in 17 people -- who have diabetes.
Approximately 2,200 new cases are diagnosed each day.
Technically, this disease is known as "diabetes mellitus"
-- diabetes from the Greek for siphon, to describe the
excessive thirst and urination characteristic of this
condition, and mellitus from the Latin for honey;
diabetic urine is filled with sugar and is sweet.
Physicians and medical books use the term diabetes
mellitus, but commonly, this disease is simply called
diabetes.
In response to the growing health burden of diabetes
mellitus (diabetes), the diabetes community has three
choices: prevent diabetes; cure diabetes; and take better
care of people with diabetes to prevent devastating
complications. All three approaches are actively being
pursued by the US Department of Health and Human
Services.
Both the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are
involved in prevention activities. The NIH is involved in
research to cure both type 1 and type 2 diabetes,
especially type 1. CDC focuses most of its programs on
being sure that the proven science is put into daily
practice for people with diabetes. The basic idea is that
if all the important research and science are not made
meaningful in the daily lives of people with diabetes,
then the research is, in essence, wasted.
Several approaches to "cure" diabetes are being
pursued:
 | Pancreas transplantation |
| Islet cell transplantation (islet cells produce
insulin) |
| Artificial pancreas development |
| Genetic manipulation (fat or muscle cells that don't
normally make insulin have a human insulin gene inserted
- then these "pseudo" islet cells are transplanted into
people with type 1 diabetes). |
Each of these approaches still has a lot of challenges,
such as preventing immune rejection; finding an adequate
number of insulin cells; keeping cells alive; and others.
But progress is being made in all areas.
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