Utilizing Their Own Bone Marrow for Stem Cell Transplantation Reduces Insulin Dependency in Diabetics

Type II diabetes patients who undergo transplantation surgery with their own bone marrow stem cells require less insulin post surgery, a new study reveals.

The study carried out in India examining the safety and efficacy of self-donated (autologous), transplanted bone marrow stem cells in patients with type 2 diabetes (TD2M), has found that patients receiving the transplants, when compared to a control group of TD2M patients who did not receive transplantation, required less insulin post-transplantation.

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"There is growing interest in the scientific community for cellular therapies that use bone marrow-derived cells for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus and its complications," study corresponding author Anil Bhansali, PhD professor and head of the Endocrinology Department at the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education in Chandrigarh, India said.

"But the potential of stem cell therapy for this disease is yet to be fully explored," he said.

While there is growing interest in using stem cell transplantation to treat TD2M, few studies have examined the utility of bone marrow-derived stem cells.

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By experimenting with bone marrow-derived stem cells, the researchers sought to exploit the rich source of stem cells in bone marrow.

Their study aimed at evaluating the efficacy and safety of autologous bone marrow-derived stem cell transplantation in patients with T2DM and who also had good glycemic control.

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Good glycemic control emerged as an important factor in the transplantation group and in the non-transplanted control group.

Cell transplantation had a significant impact on the patients in this study as those administered cells demonstrated a significant reduction in insulin requirement.

A significantly smaller reduction in the insulin requirement of the control group was also observed but a "repeated emphasis on life style modification" was believed to be a contributing factor in this effect.

The study is published online for the journal Cell Transplantation.

Source-ANI