The first patient diabetic French celebrated a year of life without insulin after a transplant islet

The protagonists of the first French islet transplantation as a treatment for type 1 diabetes Severe met in Lille to celebrate its first anniversary.
A year ago, Michael, 39, diagnosed with type 1 diabetes that was no longer able to balance despite its 4-5 daily insulin injections, underwent a transplant of islet cells taken from a donor brain-dead.

Diabetes type 1 is indeed an autoimmune disease characterized by the destruction of insulin-secreting cells, called islets of Langerhans, by the patient's own immune system. Transplantation is to replace the destroyed cells.

A year later, Michel balanced blood sugar and no longer need insulin injections.

Like him, hundreds of patients worldwide are currently testing this method. The preliminary results are encouraging but need to celebrate too soon!

First, like any surgery, islet transplantation has risks, even if the method is relatively invasive. Then, as with any foreign cell transplant, patients must take anti-rejection which exposes including a risk of cancer treatment.

This is why the islet is currently only tested on a few cases where doctors believe the risk / benefit ratio acceptable.

In addition, it is too early. Nobody knows how long will the effects of the transplant.

"This is my only stress, my only question: how long this going to last?" Testifies with Reuters Health Michel French first transplant patient. "If I have to inject insulin again, it will not be dramatic, I knew that we were not sure how to completely stop insulin, but now that I know what it is to live without constantly having to think the injections, I dread to come back. "

So the technique opens up real prospects but is still at the stage of clinical trial. "Islet transplantation is not ready to be done on a large scale," said Dr. François Pattou, team director of "cell therapy of diabetes", who made the first French transplant at the University Hospital of Lille . Especially the technique faces a major difficulty: the lack of donors.