The world-renowned researcher in diabetes and professor emeritus at the UMH highlights on World Diabetes Day the promising work carried out by groups from the United States in the last year
In it World Diabetes Day, Bernat Soriaformer Minister of Health, world-renowned researcher on the disease and emeritus professor at the Miguel Hernández University, highlights the progress that are being carried out in research and search for solutions for patients.
This explains that in the last year two Research groups in California and Boston have implanted people with diabetes insulin-producing cells derived from stem cells embryonic. “Although the results are still preliminary, everything indicates that we are on the right path. What 23 years ago was a small light at the end of the tunnel is now perhaps beginning to see that end. We have to be prudent but we cannot stop working” .
The research to which the scientist has dedicated a good part of his professional career is based on the conversion of stem cells into beta cells so that the pancreas secretes insulin and allow you to cure diabetes.
“Although the results are still preliminary, everything indicates that we are on the right path. What 23 years ago was a small light at the end of the tunnel is now perhaps beginning to see that end. We have to be prudent but we cannot stop working”
Soria highlights that diabetes is a topic public health that “we must address with research, with education, with economic and social measures. My commitment to diabetes spans more than 25 years and has been dedicated to finding solutions not only for diabetes at its origin but for its complications. Little by little we are moving forward. What in 2000 was an illusion with data has become a reality in the last year. We had a very exciting preclinical, which we confirmed year after year until to be able to demonstrate that insulin-producing cells could be obtained from human stem cells“.
At increasingly younger ages
Diabetes appears at increasingly younger ages. Until a decade ago, the majority of new cases were detected over the age of 60, but currently it breaks out with increasing frequency under the age of 40. This 20-year advance in the age at which this pathology debuts is cconsequence of worsening diet, that It is also behind excess fat in minorswhich already affects 30% of the child population, and the increase in cardiovascular diseases.
Endocrinologists, nutritionists and patient associations sound the alarm to the point that doctors talk about obesity as a a real epidemicwhich is behind not only diabetes, but also pathologies such as hypercholesterolemia and derived mechanical alterations such as osteoarthritis, respiratory failure or biliary pathologies.
More than 50% of new cases of type 2 diabetes are undiagnosed. This type of disease is called “silent” because in its early stages it is asymptomatic. Patients go to the doctor when they have symptoms such as weight loss or extreme tiredness. Experts demand that blood sugar screening be implemented for people who are overweight or have risk factors from the age of 45, in which pharmacies, dentists and the companies themselves can collaborate in the medical check-ups they carry out on workers. These analytics, in fact, are detecting high glucose levels in more and more working population.
People with type 1 diabetes can develop it at any time, although the greatest number of cases occur around the age of 14. However, Type 2 diabetes appears in more and more people over the age of 45, being associated, as has already been noted, with obesity and a sedentary lifestyle. among others. Although there are several types of diabetes and each person is different, in general, there are five groups: type 2, approximately 80% of the total, with at least 5 different subtypes, 10% type 1 or autoimmune diabetes, 5% of diabetes of monogenic cause, another quite wide variety of miscellany of different causes and a transient diabetes, gestational diabetes.