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Yorkshire Post Today: News, Sport, Jobs, Property, Cars, Entertainments & More: "Transplant op offers hope for diabetes cure
Yorkshire surgeon's pioneering work
A CURE for diabetes has moved a step closer following a groundbreaking transplant operation by a Yorkshire-born surgeon.
Mike Waites
Health Correspondent
Professor James Shapiro and a team of doctors in Japan removed part of the pancreas from a healthy woman and transplanted insulin-producing cells from the organ into her 27-year-old diabetic daughter.
Within minutes the transplanted cells began producing insulin. Tests have shown she no longer requires insulin injections, raising the possibility the transplant could be used as a routine treatment.
In 2000, Prof Shapiro, who is based in Edmonton, Canada, but was born and brought up in Leeds, pioneered the use of insulin-producing islet cells taken from the pancreas of dead organ donors in an operation which has now been performed worldwide on more than 500 patients.
But it is believed the use of tissue from living donors will improve the quality of transplanted cells, reduce the side-effects and make the treatment more widely available.
Doctors say they need to carry out further trials of the technique amid concerns pancreatic damage in living donors could put them at risk of diabetes but are hopeful the latest success could offer the prospect of a cure for Type 1 patients.
Prof Shapiro said it was a 'major' step forward. Both mother and daughter had left hospital and were doing well.
Before the operation, the daughter had suffered several diabetic comas caused by low blood sugar and had been waiting for a transplant from a dead donor using islets which were often damaged following death.
'She's being monitored closely. We will have to wait and see how long the cells last but we hope it will be indefinitely,' he said.
'It's the first one we've done but so far it looks very promising.
'Our expectation is that these islets from near-perfect organs will work better although it's too early to tell.
'Living donor islet transplants could allow many more desperate patients with Type 1 diabetes to get successful islet transplants.'"
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Digital, easy to use Blood Pressure Monitor - Cool Tools
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