Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
The diabetes world is abuzz with the news that Dr. Denise Faustman has published results from a small trial with promise for a cure for long-term diabetics. Catherine Price did a wonderful job of summarizing the findings and assessing the relevance to diabetics; what follows here is an in-depth look at the paper from the Faustman lab.
TL;DR: There are many studies over many years that support Faustman’s suspicion that inflammation of the innate immune system , the part of the immune system that serves as the body’s first line of defense against pathogens, plays a crucial role in the development and maintenance of autoimmunity. However, the results as reported do not support the claim that the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine had a significant effect on insulin production or T cell viability in subjects.
Part 1: The Background Story
All right, for those of you still with me, let’s begin. In PLoS ONE last week, Dr. Faustman’s lab published results from a human trial that began enrolling patients in 2009; according to the publication, a vaccine used against tuberculosis for almost a century, the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine, showed promise as an immune-modifying treatment for long-term diabetes. Faustman’s use of the BCG vaccine had less to do with the vaccine itself than the fact that the vaccine has been shown to cause cells of the immune system to produce a protein called Tumor Necrosis Factor alpha (TNF-a), which Faustman and other labs have been researching in relation to type 1 diabetes for more than twenty years. So what is TNF-a, and why is it so important?
http://asweetlife.org/a-sweet-life-...epth-look-at-the-faustman-lab-research/29003/
TL;DR: There are many studies over many years that support Faustman’s suspicion that inflammation of the innate immune system , the part of the immune system that serves as the body’s first line of defense against pathogens, plays a crucial role in the development and maintenance of autoimmunity. However, the results as reported do not support the claim that the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine had a significant effect on insulin production or T cell viability in subjects.
Part 1: The Background Story
All right, for those of you still with me, let’s begin. In PLoS ONE last week, Dr. Faustman’s lab published results from a human trial that began enrolling patients in 2009; according to the publication, a vaccine used against tuberculosis for almost a century, the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine, showed promise as an immune-modifying treatment for long-term diabetes. Faustman’s use of the BCG vaccine had less to do with the vaccine itself than the fact that the vaccine has been shown to cause cells of the immune system to produce a protein called Tumor Necrosis Factor alpha (TNF-a), which Faustman and other labs have been researching in relation to type 1 diabetes for more than twenty years. So what is TNF-a, and why is it so important?
http://asweetlife.org/a-sweet-life-...epth-look-at-the-faustman-lab-research/29003/