WTOC, Savannah, Georgia, news, weather and sports | Researchers Looking for New Diabetes Treatment
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Juvenile diabetes can come on suddenly and it leads to a lifetime of dependency on insulin. Are researchers any closer to finding out what is behind juvenile, or type one, diabetes? It's an immune disorder in which the body literally turns on itself.
And you'd be surprised at what some of the triggers of this disease can be.
Hess Elementary school student Erika Meador is an expert at taking shots. Just ten years old, she injects herself at least seven times a day with insulin, to keep her type one diabetes in check. She also takes two types of medications if her blood sugar gets out of whack, and has made radical changes to her diet.
"I can't have a lot of sugar or carbs," she told us. "Or else my blood sugar gets too high and I have to take more insulin."
Erika made those lifestyle changes just over a year ago, when she and her parents noticed she wasn't recovering from the flu. "I was drinking a lot, but I wasn't eating a lot and I was losing weight."
Diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, Erika became part of the 20 percent of children told each year they have the disease.
Dr. Joseph Dehaven is an endocrinologist who treats patients with diabetes. He says each month, he sees at least one new case of onset juvenile diabetes.
"Patients tend to self-destruct their own pancreas," he explained. "We think it's some environmental stimulus that causes their immune systems to react to their own pancreas."
That outside stimulus can come from anywhere, at anytime. "An environmental stimulus could be a virus or some other type of stressor," said Dr. Dehaven. "We're really not sure."
It causes the pancreas to lose its ability to make insulin. People with diabetes will have to change their diets, and take glucose tests and insulin shots to regulate their blood sugars, for the rest of their lives.
And while Erika continues to live a normal life, she does hope they find a cure soon. "Cause I don't want to take any more shots," she said.
Right now, experts at Emory Hospital in Atlanta are looking at doing an ilet cell transplant in the pancreas. A transplant could restore the organ's ability to make insulin.
Reported by: Melanie Ruberti, mruberti@wtoc.com
