Diabetes in the News

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.

New Diabetes Vaccine To Be Trialed
Scientists in the United Kingdom have been working on a possible vaccine to prevent Type 1 diabetes in people who are at high risk. [...] Dr. Colin Dayan from the University of Bristol, co-team leader for the trial, has said, “It will be of help for people who have just been diagnosed. It might stop their insulin-producing cells from deteriorating further. Then, if it proves to be very safe, we would think about using it in people who are at high risk of developing Type 1 diabetes.”  Source

Broad Alliance Between Walgreens And Joslin Diabetes Center To Improve Diabetes Outcomes
Walgreens, the nation’s largest drugstore chain, and Joslin Diabetes Center, the global leader in diabetes research, care and education, have formed a sweeping alliance to improve health outcomes for Americans with diabetes. Over the next five years, Walgreens and Joslin, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, will develop and deliver awareness, wellness, prevention and education programs nationally to reach the estimated 21 million Americans with diabetes and the additional 41 million Americans at risk for the disease. Walgreens also will open a specialty pharmacy on the Joslin campus under a separate lease arrangement.  Source

Sleep Loss May Hinder Diabetes Control
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Not getting enough shut eye each night or not sleeping well may contribute to reduced blood sugar control in African Americans with type 2, also referred to as adult-onset diabetes, according to a study published this week. Similar ties between sleep and blood sugar control are likely to exist in other ethnic groups as well, the study team predicts.

“Sleep curtailment has become increasingly prevalent in modern society and it cannot be excluded that this behavior has contributed to the current epidemic of type 2 diabetes,” Dr. Eve Van Cauter and colleagues at the University of Chicago write in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Boosting sleep quantity and quality may be a simple way to improve the health of people with diabetes, they suggest.

The researchers interviewed 161 adult African Americans with type 2 diabetes and found that they slept an average of 6 hours per night. Only 22 percent averaged at least 7 hours of shut eye per night and just 6 percent got at least 8 hours of sleep nightly. Moreover, 71 percent had poor quality sleep.  Source

MRI Can Track Survival of Pancreatic Islets After Transplantation
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with an approved contrast agent may provide a practical way of monitoring the survival of transplanted pancreatic islets. In the September issue of the journal Diabetes, researchers from the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) report successfully tracking over time the fate of islets transplanted into mice using a protocol currently being tested in human patients.

“Clinical trials and animal studies show that there is a significant loss of islets following transplantation due to many factors, not just rejection,” says Anna Moore, PhD, of the MGH Martinos Center, who led the study. “Currently there is no direct way to follow the causes behind this loss and how it proceeds over time. Monitoring islet survival by noninvasive imaging could give us the ability to detect and measure rates of islet loss under a variety of conditions, which could help develop procedures leading to better therapeutic outcomes.”  Source