“It’s a minute by minute struggle … I think about it all the time. If I have a glass of juice, I have to estimate how much I’ve had, and then take the right amount of insulin, and then factor in, okay, I didn’t have a lot of sleep last night, so that’s going to affect my blood sugar, or there’s a lot of stress in my life, or there’s a lot of excitement going on…”.
Mary Costello is a young, professional, reasonably fit registered nurse and knows the ups and downs of diabetes better than most others in her profession. She has a permanent attachment to her abdomen, to allow her to easily inject insulin, and finds it a daily chore. Diabetes is now seen as an epidemic by health researchers – however, stem cell therapy providers in Thailand have had great success treating patients with their own adult stem cells for this invasive disease.
Stem cell therapy providers in Thailand have recognized and been exploiting the potential of stem cells to treat diabetes for a while now. Up to seven hospitals in Thailand are now using stem cell therapy to treat diabetes. A small amount of fat is harvested from diabetic patient’s waists. The pathologist separates the stem cells and activates them with natural proteins, and they are then returned to patient’s bodies intravenously. This greatly improves diabetes symptoms. New research is coming to light that helps explain the mechanisms and reasons for their success.
Researchers at the University of California San Diego discovered recently that in patients with type 2 diabetes, the Wnt signaling pathway of their insulin producing pancreatic cells is up-regulated. The Wnt signaling pathway is a series of protein chemical exchanges that controls the expression of a set of genes, and has an important roles in normal development. Changes to this pathway are also seen in cancer patients. The Wnt pathway is important because it then up-regulates the expression of c-myc, a protein which is thought to destroy insulin-producing beta cells. Wnt signaling has been seen in obese mice well before they develop actual diabetes symptoms. The researchers were led down this path by their stem cell research.
Early in 2008, one of the most significant breakthroughs was made in understanding how stem cell therapy for diabetes would work. A team at the University of Manchester in conjunction with University of Sheffield workers, genetically manipulated the adult stem cells to produce transcription factor. This helps ensure that much greater numbers of stem cells actually become insulin producing pancreatic cells, rather than the neurons which cells turn into with normal stem cell therapy if left unprompted. Transcription factor PAX4 changed the expression of insulin producing cells from a former 1% , to a massive 20%. Scientists were also able to separate the target cells from other types, which helps reduce the risk of cancer from the treatment
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Science Matters #1: Dr. Oz explains to Oprah and Michael J. Fox why embryonic stem cell research is dangerous and won’t cure Parkinson’s, but Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell research will! Supporting documents: – Downloadable PDF of successful adult stem cell treatments of Parkinson’s patients, including a study where the patients reduced 83% of symptoms! tinyurl.com – More information on iPS research under #1 of article: “9 Things the Media Messed Up About the Obama Stem Cell Story” tinyurl.com Click here to see the entire Oprah segment: tinyurl.com More stem cell info at StemCellAnswers.com Follow us on Twitter Twitter.com
The bald community is doing cartwheels over the latest baldness cure in a string of other purported bald cures that have been introduced during the last 10-15 years. This newest innovation comes in pill form and is a prescription drug called Propecia.
Propecia, whose generic name is finasteride, helps hair grow back by blocking the conversion of testosterone into dihyrdo-testosterone, commonly referred to as DHT. DHT prevents hair from growing, so by blocking its formation, hair can begin to grow again.
The results of a clinical trial that tested the efficacy of Propecia revealed that 20% of men who took a small amount of the drug for a year grew back moderate to heavy amounts of hair! And another 30% grew some hair. The clinical trial also revealed that it took longer for some of the men to start regrowing hair; these men experienced positive results after taking the drug for 2 years.
The best news is that finasteride has been demonstrated to help prevent prostate cancer, so this additional benefit is a further incentive for bald men to give Propecia a try, because bald men show an increased risk of developing prostate cancer. Sounds too good to be true? Perhaps. Propecia usage can reduce sex drive and cause impotence in some men, but these effects disappear when usage of the drug is halted.
However, this effect upon sex drive is not universal, it may be experienced in some men and not in others. Besides, you can always use Viagra to counteract the effects of having a reduced libido. Most men would do anything to grow their back, and if Propecia provides that answer, then it’s worth a shot.
To maintain the hair you grow back as a result of taking Propecia, it is important to keep taking it, as once the medication is discontinued, the hair loss returns. So, you must continue to take the drug indefinitely to keep the hair, which is costly to the consumer since it is not ordinarily covered by health insurance.
But this is not necessarily a bad thing. Propecia can help you restore your head of hair for the time being, and then sometime in the near future, stem cell cures for baldness will likely be available and will probably be the permanent answer for curing baldness once and for all. In 2004, a test performed on mice revealed that bald mice easily grew back their hair after being given stem cells that were engineered to induce hair growth.
It’s not hard for scientists to imagine that one day they will be able to implant “blank-slate” stem cells into areas where men are bald, resulting in hair for life. These stem cell treatments are not coming tomorrow or next year, but are certainly within our reach as biologists continue to work with stem cells and make new discoveries.
So, for now, the bald community must settle for Propecia, the short-term solution for curing baldness. Then, probably 10 years from now, biotech companies will provide the long-term solution with a cure for baldness at the genetic and cellular levels, a solution that will make them rich beyond their wildest dreams.
The FDA requires the use of a Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) facility for taking stem cell-based therapies into clinical trials. This GMP facility is a clean-room laboratory that ensures the therapeutic products will be safe and contamination-free for patients. In Spring 2008, CIRM gave 2 million for the construction of twelve stem cell research facilities in California. The University of California, Davis was one of the recipients of this Major Facilities grant. Their million award is supporting construction of the new Institute for Regenerative Cures. This 60000 square foot building will include a state-of-the-art GMP facility. Jan Nolta is the director of the UC Davis stem cell program and Institute for Regenerative Cures. Gerhard Bauer is director of the UC Davis GMP laboratory and is an assistant professor at the UC Davis school of medicine. Video Rating: 5 / 5
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