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| Categories: Additional article for Therapies |
| Additional article for Therapies | |
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The way out of diabetes? - Islet cell transplantation
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At the moment, the transplantation of a pancreas or single islet cells (beta cells) is the only way to get independent from insulin. However, there are some difficulties wherefore only type 1 diabetics with chronic kidney insufficiency and dialysis have been treated with a transplantation.
History of clinical islet cell transplantation
- Until 1968 only mechanically produced pancreas-fragments were transplanted.
- In experiments with animals islets of Langerhans were isolated. From 1974 until 1985 researcher worked on selecting islet cell from human pancreas.
- Today a large number of islet cells can be isolated from human pancreas.
The major disadvantage of a transplantation is that patients have to take lifelong immunosupressants. As the type 1 diabetics mentioned above already have to take such medication a transplantation is applied in such cases. The transplantation of a pancreas always leads to a rejection response. As experiments with animals have shown, this is not the case when single islet cells are transplanted. With a special treatment they can nearly be fitted to the attributes of the body.
Until the middle of 2002 493 cases of islet cell transplantations on type 1 diabetics had been registered. In 138 cases the maximum aim of the therapy, complete independence from insulin, had been achieved. In Gießen most of the isolated cells came from the same donator's pancreas. In this tranplantation centre 24 patients were given new islet cells. Those cells were not taken from the kidney donator (most transplantations were done together with or shortly after a kidney transplantation). However, the transplantation was permanent in only two cases.
Meanwhile, it is really impressing how much islet cell transplantations have been performed and how much of these were established permanently, i.e. were not rejected or necrosed. Even so, increasing the group of patients will not be possible in the near future.
Source: Mathias D. Brendel, Inselzelltransplantation...? Was ist möglich?. In: Zucker 1/2003, S.18-19
Translated by Jella Eifler
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