By Otto Rodriguez
Miami-Dade Health
Diabetes is a brutal disease in which the body’s ability to produce or respond to the hormone insulin is impaired, resulting in abnormal metabolism of carbohydrates and elevated levels of glucose in the blood and urine.
Diabetes can strike anyone, from any walk of life, and it does in numbers that are dramatically increasing. In the last decade, the cases of people living with the disease jumped almost 50 percent to more than 30 million Americans. More than 422 million people all over the world suffer from diabetes, which is a leading cause of blindness, kidney failure, amputations, heart failure and stroke.
In recent years, researchers, doctors, and drug makers have made important advances in the treatment of the disease. Here are some of the latest treatments:
1-) A drug called methyldopa, on the World Health Organization’s list of essential drugs for treating high blood pressure in pregnant women and children could have another purpose: blocking a molecule implemented in the autoimmune response that can give rise to type-1 diabetes.
2-) Doctors implanted recently insulin-producing cells into a fatty membrane in the stomach cavity of a woman, and the success of the operation is paving the way towards more people receiving artificial pancreases.
3-) Clinical trials began last year for testing for a credit-card sized implant containing insulin-producing cells derived from stem cells.
4-) Type 1 diabetes develops when a person’s immune system wipes out insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas, but another type of beta cell lives in the pancreas and scientists think it might be possible to use these ‘virgin beta cells’ to restore the functionality of that organ.
5-) Checking your tears for glucose could be a whole lot less invasive than drawing blood, and a new type of contact lens is being in the works to monitor the levels of glucose.
