Chinese scientists achieve diabetes cure through innovative cell therapy, detailed in Cell Discovery. Patient, treated in July 2021, no longer requires insulin after eleven weeks, and is now medication-free for 33 months. The breakthrough, praised by Timothy Kieffer, signifies a major advancement in diabetes treatment. This novel approach utilizes the body's regenerative abilities and could alleviate China's healthcare burden. Further studies are needed for validation.
Interesting, but that headline is misleading.
A single patient was weaned off blood sugar medication over a year and hasn’t redeveloped diabetes in almost three years.
There’s obviously a lot more research into the cell therapy process and many more patients are going to have to undergo this therapy in controlled conditions before we can call it a new cure.
Right now, this is an interesting medical anomaly that occurred over more than a year of treatment in which someone’s pancreatic process was restored in correlation with a new cell therapy.
As is standard for science stories, especially medical stories, in the media.
This is how big of a problem it is: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/6/15/18679138/nutrition-health-science-mice-news
First human trial for a treatment strategy passed (notably, we know that placebo treatments for diabetes fail). This more than passes the bar to justify further large-scale human trials and, clinically, is a very strong indicator of success.
What, is it not a cure until it’s available to the public?
It justifies, in fact begs for human trials, but a single unregulated data point from a single moment is hardly a cure.
It becomes a cure after the treatment is isolated from mitigating factors and acutely applied to the same disorder in many patients in controlled conditions with peer-reviewed and independently confirmed repeatable results over time.
I mean, the guy is correct… there are plenty of cases where someone has recovered from something that doesn’t have widespread impact.
That doesn’t make this any less, but a good dose of scepticism is pretty healthy when it comes to broad statements like ‘cures diabetes’
Edit: too many versions of ‘healthy’ haha