Wounded soldier's diabetes is `cured' with cells

Wounded soldier's diabetes is `cured' with cells

www.miamiherald.com

BY FRED TASKER AND LESLEY CLARK
[email protected]
WASHINGTON -- In an apparent medical first, doctors removed a bullet-scarred pancreas from a wounded serviceman, flew the organ from Walter Reed Army Medical Center to the University of Miami, salvaged insulin-producing cells, then flew it back and transplanted the cells into the man's liver.

Tuesday, three weeks after the procedure, a jubilant surgical team announced that the transplanted cells are producing insulin. And Airman Tre F. Porfirio, 21, of St. Mary's, Ga., felt good enough to meet the University of Miami surgeon whose

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This is an awesome feel good type of story that is truly amazing in not just the advancements that are being made in medicine but the absolute lengths that medical professionals can go to in this day and age of rapid transportation communications and technology.

Miami might be the undisputed champ when it comes to every kind of fraud and vice known to man but we also have one other very notable thing and that’s the amazing folks at Jackson Memorial Hospital and the University Of Miami Medical School.

The UM Team of Surgeons worked for six intensive hours this past Thanksgiving Day to perform an experimental procedure on the pancreas of a wounded soldier that had been removed from him at Walter Reed Medical Center in suburban Washington D.C. and just had the organ itself flown to Miami. They removed the Insulin Producing Cells from it, safely isolated them and flew those cells back to Washington to be injected into the soldier’s liver at Walter Reed and managed to successfully cure him of a life time of diabetes.

All I can say is WOW! Now that is truly impressive! Job well done for the folks at Walter Reed, Jackson Memorial and the University of Miami and one very lucky soldier!


www.miamiherald.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Righton, good for that guy who finally doesn't have to deal with diabetes. People shouldn't have to deal with the diseases we have in this world today, most of them can be cured simply by diet.

I'm glad to hear the guy doesn't have to go through as much pain anymore .

Good post S&F

Big pharma is no going to like this one at all, after all type 1 specially type 2 diabetes is a big money making with drugs and insulin that actually are killing the people rather than helping in the long run.

``It's an operation we would have done for anyone, but for someone who is putting his life on the line for all of us, I couldn't think of a better way to spend Thanksgiving,'' said Dr. Camillo Ricordi, chief of the UM Medical School's Diabetes Research Institute, who developed the method for isolating cells from the pancreas.

The procedure represents the first known case of transplanting insulin-producing cells following a severe trauma -- and the first time such a transplant has been done remotely in an emergency. Ricordi said he hopes it can lead to near-permanent cures for people facing diabetes -- which Porfirio would have faced without a functioning pancreas.

`This could become an unlimited cure available for everyone,'' Ricordi said, noting that the procedure could lead to more cases of transplanting cells from even a segment of a damaged pancreas.

This truly is an incredible story in that diabetes is one of the most debilitating common diseases to afflict Americans.
Various treatments can manage the disease but never before has there been a way to cure it.

This procedure could lead to countless people living a better quality of life and eliminating the need for managed insulin injections.

It also opens the door to a new fledgling form of medicine that could very well lead to similar chronic diseases being cured in the same fashion.

Very big breakthrough here, very big.

Originally posted by marg6043
Big pharma is no going to like this one at all, after all type 1 specially type 2 diabetes is a big money making with drugs and insulin that actually are killing the people rather than helping in the long run.

No they sure aren't going to like it at all! Big Pharma will have to now invent some new costlier managed illness to make up for this potential tragic loss in revenue!

One does have to wonder how many advancements in medicine Big Pharma is actually holding back?

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


I am very happy for the soldier, specially when my mother is now a full blown diabetic on insulin and just happen a year ago, I always blame it on the amount of pills that my mother have to take for controlling her hart disease that go full blown under medical care and more pills.

I am trying so hard to research on alternative to help my mother get off the increasingly doses of her insulin, but with type 1 diabetes the cells in the pancreas start to die and they are irreplaceable.

News like this one brings a change to people on type 1 diabetes the ones that their cells can be replaced.

But the underlying problem of type 1 diabetes is that is something else causing the death of the cells and while a procedure like the one the soldier received can help, the real reason for the cells to die needs to be diagnosed first and that is something that nobody is trying to find out as today, because is more money on treating the condition that finding a cure.

Yes, they are doing this, pancreatic islet transplantation, I have known about it for a few years, my daughter is a type one, it isn't a secret, with this you have to use, Immunosuppressive Drugs, like any other transplant,

However people can save their babies umbilical cord for this exact purpose,

diabetes.niddk.nih.gov...

They also now have insulin inhalers, which her doctor wanted to use her for a guinea pig, because she has asthma too and it hasn't been fully tested on asthmatics, we said no.
www.nytimes.com...
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[edit on 103131p://bWednesday2009 by Stormdancer777]

reply to post by marg6043


Some new theories is that diabetes is an autoimmune disorder, brought on by a virus, shortly before my daughter came down with diabetes she had spinal meningitis,

Is your mother a good candidate for the pump?

www.medicinenet.com...

I hear a lot of good things about it.



yourtotalhealth.ivillage.com...

[edit on 103131p://bWednesday2009 by Stormdancer777]

reply to post by Stormdancer777


My mother is in PR I am in the US while my sister works for the health care system in PR she has allowed my mother to get to the point she is at, while If I have been back home I would have help or even prevented some of her problems.

But my mother is 66, have already a mild hart attack at 59, a stent on her hart at 63 is under prescription drugs for all kind of things and my mother doesn't even tell me the name of the drugs she takes.

My mother thinks that her diabetes is the result of the medication on her hart stent and the pills.

In my last call to her she has gotten her insulin up for the second time in one year, I am worry about her health and I know that if she goes the path of prescription drugs she is no going to last long.

I never heard of this procedure before and I am sure I will be calling her to find out if she knows about it.

reply to post by marg6043

I sympathize with your mother Marg. Sounds like she has LADA. Latent Autoimmune Diabetes of Adulthood. This form of Diabetes is or can be caused by a virus. I should know, it happened to me.
Perfectly healthy, never been sick. I come down with a virus that knocks me on my butt. Next thing I know I'm a type 1 diabetic.
The technology thats coming fwd. regarding Stem Cell regeneration of organ functionality is absolutely amazing to me. It does however throw a monkey wrench into the Eugenicists plans. Thank God.....

reply to post by marg6043


My mother has Diabetes too and takes a whole host of medications to regulate seemingly every little thing that the human body has to do to maintain life.

I won’t go so far as to say my elderly mother is a hypochondriac but she is from that post World War II generation that bought into hook line and sinker that notion that science and medicine now has a cure for every little ache and pain one feels.

One friend puts it best when she proclaims “Growing old ain’t for sissies” but people like my mother have been conditioned to believe that you should run to the doctor for every little ache and pain that they have some kind of pill or surgery for it and that it’s the smart thing to do.

The reality is the doctors always find something wrong for a patient who insists something must be wrong and they must be able to do something about it.

So they prescribe a pill which usually has side effects that just make another trip to the doctor necessary to deal with the discomforts of the side effects.

They prescribe other pills which reduce the impact of the previous side effects but that pill of course just leads to more side effects and of course that just sets up the whole cycle from there.

Over the years she has been doing this (a good thirty) at least three of her constant medications eventually were taken off the market because of their damaging side effects. In each case she had been taking them for ten plus years when they were finally yanked from the market.

Her mindset is she sees the whole process as a way to extending life and managing ones health. Exercise, diet, moderation and common sense are not required just doctors and a good insurer and prescription drug plan.

My mindset is that it’s a process of a slow controlled death for profit.

Big Pharmaceuticals are a killer!

reply to post by The Undertaker


Yes I have been researching on the diabetes 1, because of my mother now, is just so much information and I get so frustrated, specially when my grandmother and her two sisters in their 80s are alive, well and just facing old age aches and pains with not other complications.

Now that I am finding out that is can be cause by a virus, I wonder if her hart stent is the cause as it have the released medicine in it.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


Yes they are killing people!!!!!! I have seen the deterioration of my mother one pill at a time for the last 20 years.

And is so frustrating that I will question anything the doctor wants to give me but my mother just take them even when it was a time that she took up to 10 pills a day and she could not even eat.

Her diabetes went unnoticed by her hart doctor and the other doctors that are draining her private insurance for years until she collapsed at home bleeding, by the time the ambulance came they were no giving her very much chance, but as usual she came back, now to be getting into more pills and her health slowly deteriorating.

reply to post by marg6043


I swear people like our mothers live on not because of all the drugs that are being given to them but their own strong constitutions and desire to live even while slowly being poisoned to death.

A real quality of life in every aspect is one of ballance.

I find it hard to believe that these pharmacutical companies are making drugs that maintain a healthy balance within the body biologically.

I think that they know that they are literally robbing Peter to pay Paul by sacrificing crucial ellements required for overall good health to put a little extra into some relatively benign ache or pain that in most cases would just go away with proper diet and exercise and focus.

They prey on people's inherent desire to be pain free and their trusting nature in anyone who has a title and a uniform!

reply to post by marg6043


Marge, sometimes there is no rhyme or reason for the blood sugar swings, my daughter tries so hard to regulate, and she gets depressed.



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reply to post by The Undertaker

Latent Autoimmune Diabetes of Adulthood. This form of Diabetes is or can be caused by a virus. I should know, it happened to me.
Perfectly healthy, never been sick. I come down with a virus that knocks me on my butt. Next thing I know I'm a type 1 diabetic.

Interesting, my daughter was 16,

I just read a web page that is focusing on immunization that we get when we are children being a culprit in the cause of the rise in type one.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

Big Pharmaceuticals are a killer!

Speaking of,

I also have this theory, since my daughter was asthmatic and the doctors always gave her the latest inhalers,

I often wondered if it had something to do with one specific inhalers that she said always made her sick, Advair.

reply to post by Stormdancer777


Beware is a link between artificial sweeteners and depression that seems to affect diabetics more than anybody else, if your daughter is using artificial sweeteners you should research on that.

Originally posted by marg6043
reply to post by Stormdancer777

 

Beware is a link between artificial sweeteners and depression that seems to affect diabetics more than anybody else, if your daughter is using artificial sweeteners you should research on that.

OH wow, I never thought of that, and yes she lives on diet soda.