Today there are many countries looking at type 1 diabetes research in the hope of curing the disease.  With type 1 diabetes the body’s immune system attacks itself and destroys the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.

As the body struggles through lack of insulin the body responds by increasing both blood and urine glucose, which if this symptom of diabetes goes untreated can result in heart disease, diabetic retinopathy, stroke, kidney failure, blindness and early death.  Currently the most common treatment of type one diabetes is by daily injections of insulin.

New Type 1 Diabetes Research

I read with interest that type 1 diabetes research is underway by diabetes researchers in Australia testing a nasal spray vaccine, which may prevent the development of type 1 diabetes that is very encouraging.  A previous study conducted on mice has revealed that the nasal spray was successful in preventing the disease, this was enough evidence to further progress the study to include around 52 adult volunteers who were experiencing the early stages of type 1diabetes and again the results have been positive. While this series of tests in this new diabetes research has only been developed for 1 type diabetes the results are very promising.

Results Type 1 Diabetes Research – Nasal Spray

All of the 52 volunteers in the type 1 diabetes research had early type 1 diabetes and showed evidence of immunity to insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas, at the time of research they were not reached the stage of requiring insulin injections. During the research evaluation, the volunteers were either given nasal vaccine or a placebo for over 1 year.

“The results showed that the vaccine allowed the immune system to restore immune tolerance to insulin,” said Professor Len Harrison of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Australia. “When subsequently given insulin by injection, the participants who had received the nasal insulin vaccine were found to be desensitized to insulin.”  Read the full story at Royal Melbourne Hospital

The study of diabetes type 1 research that was conducted at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and the Royal Melbourne Hospital are delighted with the results of the study and have indicated that they are on the correct course to not only to find a suitable vaccine for type 1 diabetes if adapted there could also be a similar type of vaccine adapted for other autoimmune diseases.

“The nasal vaccine approach, if shown to be successful in human type 1 diabetes, could also be tested with different vaccines for the prevention of other autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis,” added Professor Harrison.

How far away is this breakthrough?

Since the Type 1 Diabetes Prevention Trial started in 2006 it has now reached the halfway mark of the test phase. Now with the excellent results shown during the research, there are high hopes that the nasal vaccine for type 1 diabetes may be available as soon as two years time.  Full details of the research were published in the April 2011 issue of the diabetes journal.

The results shown in the type 1 diabetes research does look very promising!