Is There A Cure for 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. The US Department of Health and Human Services is actively pursuing all three approaches. 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
