New drug shows promise for delaying full diabetes

Los Angeles Times And Associated Press

Scientists have delayed the onset of full-blown diabetes in young people for at least a year with a two-week treatment that blocked a specific part of the youths’ immune systems.

But to doctors’ disappointment, a landmark study has found that preventive injections of insulin do not ward off a common form of diabetes.

In the first study, patients taking the drug — designed from an immune-system antibody known as OKT3 — continued to produce their own insulin and required fewer and smaller insulin shots than those who were not treated, according to a study published in today’s New England Journal of Medicine. Previous studies have shown that diabetics who continue to produce at least some insulin have better control of their blood-sugar levels and far fewer devastating side effects, such as blindness and loss of nerve sensation.

Twelve patients were treated in this preliminary test supervised at Columbia University. Nine kept their ability to make insulin.

The drug is not expected to delay the disease indefinitely. Nevertheless, these results are "remarkable," said Dr. Robert Goldstein, chief scientific officer of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

"For the first time, it has been shown that progression of the destructive autoimmune response can be stopped with few side effects and (insulin production) preserved," he said.

But a second, much larger, study also published in today’s New England Journal of Medicine showed that another once-promising approach to preventing the disease — giving regular insulin shots to children in an effort to block the onset of diabetes — does not work.

The idea of preventing diabetes with insulin has been considered for decades. More recently, animal research and small studies with people suggested it would work for type 1 diabetes. Some doctors were already giving insulin to patients in the hope of preventing it.

More-common type 2 diabetes — in which the body cannot process insulin correctly — would be beyond the reach of preventive insulin.