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Welcome to “Diabetes in the News”. This feature has links to diabetes related news stories, blogs, or websites. If you come upon a story, blog or website that I haven’t mentioned, e-mail me at jmp5329 at yahoo.com. I will check it out and if posted, give credit where credit is due.

Vitamin D Cuts Pancreatic Cancer Risk
ATLANTA (AP) – Taking vitamin D cut the risk of pancreatic cancer nearly in half, according to a new study that is being called the first to show such a benefit.

Vitamin D protects against colorectal and breast cancer, earlier studies have found. And lab and animal studies show it stifles abnormal cell growth and curbs formation of blood vessels that feed tumors.

“I’ve been converted from a skeptic about a role of vitamin D in preventing cancer to a believer that there’s something there,” said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society.

Taking 450 international units (IUs) of vitamin D – about the standard dose in most multivitamins – reduced the risk of pancreatic cancer by 43 percent, according to researchers at Northwestern and Harvard universities who led the latest study. Source

Grandma always told me to take my vitamins!

Diabetes Could Cripple Health Budgets, Says Expert
LONDON (Reuters) – Europe’s growing diabetes epidemic could cripple healthcare budgets in coming decades, particularly in eastern countries, an expert warned on Thursday.

More than 53 million Europeans, or 8.4 percent of the adult population, suffer from diabetes. New figures from the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) predict the numbers could reach 9.8 percent of adults by 2025.

“The projections are that unless this epidemic is turned around, it has the capacity to cripple all healthcare budgets,” said Professor Martin Silink, president-elect of the IDF.

Most developed countries spend around 10 percent of their healthcare budgets on diabetes now. But the illness, which is often linked with obesity, is increasing at the rate of about 7 million new cases a year worldwide.

“Healthcare budgets will just not be able to cope,” Silink told Reuters.  Source

Transplant Cures Rats’ Type 2 Diabetes Without Need For Immune Suppression Drugs
An approach proven to cure a rat model of type 1 or juvenile-onset diabetes also works in a rat model of type 2 or adult-onset diabetes, according to a new report from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

“Finding that we can cure type 2 diabetes in the same way is very significant because in humans type 2 diabetes is almost 20 times more prevalent than type 1 diabetes,” says senior author Marc R. Hammerman, M.D., the Chromalloy Professor of Renal Diseases in Medicine. “There are about 200 million type 2 diabetics worldwide, and the incidence is rapidly increasing.”

The treatment approach transplants precursors of the pancreas from embryonic pigs. In a previous study, Hammerman and co-developer Sharon A. Rogers, research instructor in medicine, showed that they could transplant the cells in a way that lets them grow into insulin producers without triggering attacks by the rats’ immune systems. This cured the rats’ diabetes without the risky immune suppression drugs required to prevent rejection in other transplant-based treatments.  Source

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