We are told that if you are overweight it is your own fault for eating too much! The logic is like a tub of water where the water stands for food energy. To live and move a certain amount of water drains out of the tub, so you eat to fill the tub again. The energy level drops an inch, so we eat, it goes up an inch, and our weight remains the same. Very simple, but only partly true.
Benfotiamine Pharmaceutical Therapy May be Alternative to Islets Transplants
August 17th, 2009
You are probably aware of the increasing interest in benfotiamine as an oral medication to prevent the metabolism of excess glucose in diabetics to the advanced glycation end products which are the ultimate cause of diabetic complications. This drug has a half-century record of use as an extremely safe over-the-counter remedy for alcoholic neuritis. Although data began emerging in the mid-1990s showing its capacity to block the formation of diabetic complications from excess blood sugar, it was only with M. Brownlee’s publication of its effectiveness in Nature: Medicine in February, 2003, that interest in benfotiamine really took off.
Life Expectancy of Encapsulated Islets
August 17th, 2009
I wonder if any differentially permeable membrane screen against immunological attack can work in principle. Since these devices rely on diffusion of nutrients across the membrane while nature uses vascularization to achieve cell nutrition, I suspect that encapsulated beta cells will always have a life expectancy so short that they will simply not be cost-effective, especially if they cannot provide sufficient blood glucose control to allow patients to live without chasing blood sugar levels with injected insulin.
Consequences of Cell Death in Islet Sheets?
August 17th, 2009
I wonder what happens when the encapsulated beta cells decay? Decaying tissue collapses into a wide variety of particles of different dimensions, so what ensures that they will not leak into the abdomen, which is literally a perfect medium ready to magnify even the slightest infection into instant peritonitis.
Is Partial Control Good Enough?
August 17th, 2009
If patients have to fill in the difference between the control achieved with the beta cell encapsulated implant and the physiologic levels they are striving for, the shortfall may mean that there will not be much improvement in the complications. This is clear from the fact that even slight increases in blood sugar produce measurable worsening of complications…
Diabetes: Past, Present, Future
July 27th, 2009
Diabetes is one of man’s oldest known diseases, having been first described in Ancient Egypt in the Ebers papyrus. However treatment of diabetes only changed in the 20th century. Prior to 1922, the best treatment for Type 1 diabetes was the Allen diet. – an extremely low-carbohydrate and low-calorie diet. The quality of life associated with this unsustainable therapy was poor and adherence only prolonged life for weeks in most cases. Dr. Allen commented that patients were rarely compliant with this diet, often smuggling in a piece of bread. Pictures of the patients from this time reveal severe wasting, only now seen in concentration camp victims and during severe famines.
Prospects in Diabetes Therapy (circa 1980)
July 27th, 2009
To misquote Dave Eggars, “Prospects in Diabetes Therapy” is a heartwarming work of staggering genius. I was young, living in New York, working at a smart investment banking firm called F. Eberstadt & Co. (which, weirdly, had taken my father’s company public during the depression), and living in the delightful wide-open space of having become the first investment analyst of a new and hot industry, biotechnology. I remember my boss, Dick Emmitt, told me the company liked my initial work, and now I could pick my own topic for a report. I had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes less then two years previous. I told him I wanted to find out the future of diabetes therapy. He liked it – no one had investigated investment opportunities in the diabetes industry – and I was given a few months to do the research.
Potential Problems with Abdominal Site?
July 9th, 2009
If the insertion of the encapsulation into the abdomen has to be repeated every few years, have you considered the problem of scarring and surgical adhesions from these repeated procedures? The abdomen is not a paper bag that you can cut open and tape up indefinitely without consequences.
The cost of pig Islets: Too High?
July 9th, 2009
With respect to the cost, how much of this comes from the supposed need to raise the pigs used for the islet cells in sterile conditions? In European fresh cell treatment centers, patients…
Is a price of $100,000 cost effective?
July 9th, 2009
Encapsulations will certainly never be cost-effective if they cost $100,000 each, as LCT estimates, if they have to be replaced every two years, and if they are not 100% effective even while they do work.