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In study with mice, they also repaired damage to kidneys.

TUESDAY, Nov. 7 (HealthDay News) — Stem cells might one day pack a one-two punch when it comes to treating people with diabetes.

In a new study conducted with diabetic mice, human stem cells not only repaired insulin-producing cells in the rodents, they also fixed cells in damaged kidneys.

“It looks like we are doing two things, lowering blood sugar and sending cells to the kidney,” said study senior author Dr. Darwin Prockop, director of the Center for Gene Therapy at Tulane University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans. “That’s very exciting because there are about 8 million people out there with diabetes and kidney damage and nothing to offer in the way of treatment,” Prockop added.

“It’s an interesting, novel finding, although obviously some more work needs to be done,” added Dr. Rohit N. Kulkarni, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and head of his own lab in the section on cellular and molecular physiology at the Joslin Diabetes Center, both in Boston. “We are still many steps from figuring out what’s happening in humans, but this is one step towards realizing the goal of trying to figure out what stem cells do.”

Mesenchymal stem cells or multipotent stromal cells (MSCs) hold quite a bit of promise because they are easily obtained from a patient’s bone marrow, grow readily in culture and present minimal immune-system difficulties, the researchers said.

“We’re calling them adult stem or progenitor cells. They’re not quite entirely stem cells but close to it,” Prockop said. “They have a remarkable ability to heal tissues.”

Jo’s Morning BG Reading:  76