Mothers’ Stem Cells Future Diabetes Treatment
January 23, 2007 by kate baggott
Filed under Health
Yet more evidence that the relationship between mother and child, forged during pregnancy, can be the healthiest relationship either person will ever have.
The pancreas produces insulin. Insulin then regulates the body’s conversion of food sugars into energy. Diabetes kills the pancreas cells that create insulin.
Scientists once believed that cells passed from mother to child during pregnancy harmed the creation of the islet beta cells that create insulin, causing Type 1 Diabetes.
Investigations have since found that the opposite is probably true.
“We think the maternal cells may be helping to regenerate tissue in the pancreas,” Dr Lee Nelson, one of the researchers, told the Scotsman.
Treatment for Type 1 Diabetes may soon mean harvesting a mother’s stem cells that will turn into islet beta cells when transplanted into a child with Type 1 Diabetes.
