Diabetes

By Dr. Mary Holland
Updated 2020-11-10 11:07:20 | Published 2020-10-19 13:20:21
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Diabetes

Diabetes is not an easy disease to live with. Other than the necessity of avoiding any type of injury lest you may incur a risk of amputation or death, it also forces many of its sufferers to entirely change their lifestyle and to make their entire life revolve around its treatment. In the United States alone, 9.3 percent of the population is diagnosed with the illness. 28.7 percent of those need to receive insulin injections more than twice a day. This can make life particularly hard and can make forgetfulness into a costly or even fatal error.

But thankfully, this may not be the case anymore after this spring. Researchers at the university of Miami’s Diabetes Research Institute are now celebrating the success of one of the clinical trials that they started last year. The trial involved the transplant of a sort of mini-pancreas into an area called the omentum which is a fatty membrane located in the belly. This area was chosen after multiple failed trials that led to complications arising from using delicate areas like the liver.

With the artificial pancreas placed in the right place, and after one year of monitoring, the receiving patient was able to become completely independent of insulin shots and even became healthy again. This islet cell transplant helped the patient regain a totally normal life after less than a year of the application and the same could be true for millions of others worldwide after this treatment becomes commercialized.

The FDA has recently approved the use of this method for people aged 14 years and older. The device that comes with the transplant will entirely regulate and manage the artificial pancreas giving the patients no need for any hospital visits or daily injections. More research is now being done on making this product available for mass populations worldwide.

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