Stem Cell Treatment for Diabetes New Hope for Patients
The scientific development and technical advancement in the field of regenerative medicine has shown tremendous potential in treating diabetes patients to make them virtually free from their insulin dependency. Stem cells are very basic preliminary cells of human body, identified in the early stage of embryonic development and proven to be exhibiting remarkable property of self division and differentiation into multiple cellular origins; with the potential to form entire human being. Scientific community since then have come up with different techniques to isolate adult stem cells that are ethically relieved and are present in different adult sources of human body such as adipose tissues, bone marrow, etc.
Over the past decade, diabetes has emerged as a common type of metabolic disorder, optimizing the blood sugar level. For the purpose of energy derivation, the complex food molecules are being broken down into simple sugar molecules. These sugar molecules are being transported to cellular level with the help of hormone insulin. Apparently, body’s own immune cells target pancreatic beta cells and destroy them; causing severe insulin deficiency, due to which body experiences rise in blood sugar level. This leads to prediabetes and diabetes. Depending upon the internal mechanism, diabetes can be categorized in two different types, such as Diabetes type 1 and Diabetes type 2.
The prevalence of diabetes type 2 is more as compared to type 1, but both the types were so far being treated as incurable but could be manageable with proper diet, hormone supplements and living active life style. But very few people know that the long term consumption of steroidal hormone that are being prescribed should be avoided, as they might as well may lead to other possible complications like organ damage or infection, etc. Moreover, long term deregulation of blood sugar levels can be severely damaging to other vital organs of our body, such as heart, eyes, kidney, etc. On the contrary, as alternative treatment such as stem cells therapy have shown promising improvements in reducing the insulin dependency and lowering HbA1C levels. Apparently, reduced HbA1C levels can be an indication of improved sugar metabolism in the body.
Once infused back in the body, processed stem cells have been observed to be channelized at the site of injury due to their strong networking ability. It has been evident from clinical trials that immediately after infusion a strong trigger of signals pass on through them to connect various immune cells, progenitor cells and natural killer cells from all over the body. This migration would definitely help in creating a suitable microenvironment, wherein the infused stem cells will reside and multiply. Newly generated stem cells would sense the deficiency of residential cells, such as pancreatic beta cells in case of diabetes and start regenerating them with their ability to regrow.
As the research progresses, our understanding regarding the mechanism of stem cells, the path they would like to follow inside the human body and other important “know how” would definitely increase. But as of now, scientists have been sure that adult stem cells therapy actually can be an ideal way to treat autoimmune disorders, such as diabetes mellitus.
