Symptoms of Diabetes:
There are many symptoms to diabetes, some more noticeable and evident than others. The main symptoms include passing urine more than usual especially at night; increased thirst; weight loss; extreme tiredness; blurred vision; reaction to the skin or excessive itchiness; genital itching or regular episodes of thrush.
People who show these symptoms will usually notice that excreting waste through urine is the most common symptom. This is known as polyuria. With diabetes the level of glucose in the blood becomes a lot higher than normal, because of this the body removes the glucose through the kidneys and then through urine, this process is also known as glycosuria. When glucose levels are increased to a significantly high rate, urine production by the body also increases.
Thirst is caused when the patient with diabetes undergoes dehydration. Dehydration is common with people who have diabetes are water is kept in the body cells to make up for the lost blood volume. People then become extremely thirsty; this therefore also contributes to polyuria. [4]
Risk factors:
There are many factors that contribute to diabetes, especially type two. Many people believe that diabetes is completely down to genetics and inheritance, however this is false. The risk of diabetes can be reduced by lifestyle changes that a patient can pursue themselves.
A very well known risk factor of diabetes is obesity. Obesity can be caused with a poor diet that has increased amounts of saturated fats within it.
“Obesity has reached 30% in adults. That’s 60 million people.” – The National Centre for Health Statistics. [10]
Obesity causes a higher risk of there being resistance of insulin in the body. This is because the body fat will interfere with how the body usually produces insulin, and will also affect the body’s ability to use it. The increase in body fat will slow down the signals sent by the insulin receptors in the body which means glucose levels will rise in the blood therefore causing diabetes.
According to the same study, the number of obese children has tripled since 1980, to support this; the number of children that have been recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes has also increased.
Obesity not only causes diabetes in some cases, but it can also lead to other health related issues such as atherosclerosis as the fat will cause weight to be pressed against arteries making lumens narrower which restricts blood flow in the body. However, obesity is under no circumstances the only factor that may cause diabetes, however it is considered as the main one.
Type 2 diabetes is known to be the type that is most likely to be caused by inheritance and genetics. People who have family member that suffer from diabetes are more likely to be diagnosed with it also. Having a high “risk” of diabetes through family history may not necessarily mean you will definitely be diagnosed with diabetes. This is where lifestyle will play a big role in how the body deals with food intake and its ability to produce efficient amounts of insulin to help absorb the glucose in the blood. Figure 5 shows us how obesity is directly linked to diabetes and how it can be considered a major risk factor.
If more people were aware of the factors that cause a higher risk in being diagnosed with diabetes; it would mean that people would be more conscious as to make a decision about their lifestyle and health. Medication is a great way to help people who may be genetically harmed; however diabetes will be less of a problem if people understood the various risk factors involved.
Stem Cells – A future cure to diabetes?
Stem cell transplants have “freed patients with type 1 diabetes of daily insulin injections” – The Daily Telegraph.
Stem cells play a vital role in our bodies of growth and repair. They are unspecialised cells that have the ability to reproduce themselves and also differentiate into other cells, such as nerve cells, red blood cells or heart muscle cells. During the early stages of reproduction of stem cells, the cells that are reproduced (daughter cells) are the same as the original. In the later stages of cell division, the daughter cells produce a stem cell and another differentiated cell. This is the process in which stem cell transplants undertake. The stem cell produced can remain as a stem cell or have the capability to become another special type of cell. [12]
There are two different types of stem cells, these include; adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells.
Adult stem cells are obtained from adults as the name itself suggests, these can be found in the bone marrow. The main role of these adult stem cells is to repair tissues and organs in the body. There are a limited amount of adult stem cells in each tissue. This type of stem cell can stay undifferentiated for a long time until it is activated to cure a disease or injury to the body. Adult stem cells can only divide into specific cells; these stem cells are known as “multipotent stem cells”.
Scientists discovered that embryonic stem cells have the potential to divide, however it has also been seen by scientists that adult stem cells can do this also. Adult cells are easier to find in the body than embryonic cells and can be extracted from the body without any harm being done to the donor.
Scientific Studies:
1: A small study involving 23 patients with newly-diagnosed type 1 diabetes was carried out in Brazil. Stem cell transplants work by ‘resetting’ the immune system so that the body stops attacking the pancreas. The researchers themselves say that this treatment can only be used when the condition is caught early enough before the pancreas has been damaged and before any complications from very high blood sugar have developed. This research was carried out by Dr Carlos EB Couri and other colleagues from the University Of Sao Paulo in Brazil. It was also conducted by Dr Richard K Burt from the Division of Immunotherapy North-western University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
These researches were intrigued to find the effects of “autologous non- myeloablative hematopoietic stem cell transplantation”. This is a type of cell transplantation where the stem cells that are extracted from the bone marrow are taken from the blood. [7]
2: Stem cells could be used to develop islet cells which are found in the pancreas and produce insulin. These cells could be used to treat people with diabetes thought islet cell transplants. Researches (Yale Professor Hugh S Taylor leading) placed endometrial stem cells in cultures that contain nutrients and factors for growth. The endometrial cells responded to this and gained characteristics of beta cells. Beta cells are cells in the pancreas of the body that produce and provide insulin to maintain glucose levels. The endometrial stem cells began to shape like the beta cells and also produce the same proteins, some even produce insulin.
It was found that the stem cells began to produce insulin just like the beta cells. They injected the stems cells into diabetic mice that had a few working beta cells with high levels of glucose in their blood. Endometrial cells were proved to be most useful to Type 1 diabetes where the stem cells produce insulin rather than the body cells. Figure 8 shows a slide under a microscope that shows insulin producing stem cells – this was used as part of evidence to this investigation.
“Adult stem cell biology is at the forefront of the emerging field of regenerative medicine, offering a source of cells to generate tissues that lack some of the ethical and political impediments inherent in embryonic, fetal, and cloned cells.” - Kürşad Türkşen, a senior scientist in chronic disease at
Benefits of stem cell solution:
As mentioned already, the stem cell treatment has shown great effect on treating diabetes and has been a great advantage to diabetes patients.
Stem cells are cells that have a varied ability and are able to self-renew. Stem cells also have multi-purposes and can adapt easily, this is a big advantage to not only treating diabetes, but also other diseases/illnesses, because it means this will be an option as treatment which in most cases is successful. Stem cells are cells that have adapted from tissues and organs in the body. The treatment that is carried out repairs damaged cells in the body and rebuilds them as well as body tissue.
One benefit of stem cell treatment that is often overlooked is that is considerably safe and has hardly any toxicity. This means that there is not much harm that can be an outcome of the treatment to the patient.
Stem cells are the best carrier of immunotherapy and gene therapy. [13]
This means that the treatment provides immunity to the disease by enhancing the immune response in the body. Another great advantage of the stem cell treatment is to the way of life of diabetic patients. They will no longer need to lead a life which requires endless drug taking, they will become less dependent on medicine as their body will be more immune and treated against the illness.
There are other complications that come with diabetes such as high blood pressure, kidney failure, high blood fat etc. these complications can be restricted with the use of stem cell treatment which will bring the patient’s health risk to a much lower rate than without the treatment.
Stem cell treatment can also decrease the resistance of insulin being produced in the body. The stem cells can repair the islet beta cells which will allow the islet to produce new islet beta cells. The use of stem cells will enhance the insulin production in the body and treat the diabetes.[13]
Risks of stem cell solution:
As with any treatment for a disease, there will side effects that may occur as a result. The long term side effects of stem cell therapy are still unknown; this can therefore be seen as a disadvantage to people looking into having the stem cell treatment. Also, stem cell therapy is under constant research and there are many things that still need to be established by various scientists/professors before being able to fully prove that stem cell therapy can be used as treatment without any potential risks.
The disadvantage of adult stem cells is that the cells of a particular area in the body would only be able to produce cells of the same type.
Also, adult stem cells are hard to isolate from the body before being able to re-new themselves in other cells in the body. They are very small in quantity in the pancreas, and therefore it is hard to locate where they are precisely. This can cause implications as if stem cell treatment is carried out; this could be a long process in trying to find the particular adult stem cells that need to be used.
There are no particular risks that have been founded by the use of adult stem cell therapy; however the reality of using it has many implications that various researches are continuing to find out.
Alternative solutions for diabetics:
Pancreas Transplants:
This solution is a very high scale alternative, and is hardly every carried out in term of diabetes. It involves transplanting a complete pancreas from one person to another. In most cases that it has previously been done in, it has been done in combination with kidney transplants in patients who suffer from kidney failure as a result of diabetes.
“Only about 2% of the pancreas is made up of islet cells and it is a difficult procedure to extract those cells to transplant them on their own.” – NHS.
This direct quote by the NHS tells us that pancreas transplants should be done in serious cases as they are particularly dangerous to the patient. This is because it is carried out via an operation that involved connection the blood supply of the pancreas to the vessels in the leg that take blood to and from it. This operation has high risk which is the reason as to why it is not carried out often.
Insulin Pumps and inhalers:
Insulin pumps are quite new as they were invented in the 1970’s. They are attached to the patient as shown in figure 7, and are very efficient as they are portable. The pump holds an insulin reservoir that usually holds 3ml like a normal insulin pen/injection. The reservoir is attached to a needle at one end.
An insulin inhaler is very similar to ones used by asthmatics. It requires hardly any pain and is used by many people even though it is a fairly new piece of equipment also. [8]
Both of these methods are a great, pain-free way of insulin being entered into the body. However, as far as the inhalers are concerned, it will be very hard for patients to inhale the correct amount of insulin all of the time, and even if it is done correctly, there is no evidence that it is going into the bloodstream. There is no long-term evidence that using insulin inhalers will work and not lead to other diseases such as lung cancer.
Ethical and Moral Implications:
There are many ethical and moral implications that will arise from the use of cell division of stem cells. From a moral point of view, whether the stem cells are used to create new organs are taken from real embryos it is still considered as a process which causes the death of a human which can be seen as unethical.
The strong opponents to the use of embryonic stem cells are the Roman Catholic Church. They believe that the creation and destruction of human embryos should not be in the hands of humans as life is a gift from God.
However, scientists believe that stem cells have a very high value when it comes to treating diseases and they are considered as a promising treatment for diabetes and other health related problems also, such as Huntington’s, Parkinson’s.
“Stem cell research has the potential to provide better treatments and cures for many currently incurable medical conditions, including spinal cord injury, diabetes, Parkinson’s and many others. We are members of the Kansas Coalition for Lifesaving Cures because we believe patients should have access to future therapies and cures that improve and save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Kansas – and provide a model that may be needed in any other states where politicians try to impose state-level bans on stem cell treatments that are permitted under federal law.”
-Michael Manganiello, Senior Vice President of Government Relations Christopher Reeve Foundation.
Evaluation of Sources:
Source [7] is the source that the information given to support the stem cell research – a scientific investigation. This information is from .
This website is reliable as it has many examples of where stem cells have been used in previous treatments, not only diabetes. This makes it reliable as we are able to see how stem cells work in other areas other than to treat patients with diabetes. The website also has other investigations carried out by other scientists and professors that show different aspects of how stem cells work, and whether they live up to the expectations that have been made over the years towards stem cells treatment.
I think this source is very reliable and valid as it has investigations that were carried out many years ago such as the one i wrote about, as well as investigations/experiments that were carried out in 2011. This means that the website is continuously updated with new information – this is what makes it very valid in my opinion.
Source [12] was very helpful when reading and understanding more about stem cells while writing this issue report. I gathered a lot of information that I did not already have, this enabled me to gain another view on how stem cells work and how they are able to treat certain diseases. This source was from .
In my opinion, I think the source is quite reliable as it is a news website on different aspects of the medical world. I chose to evaluate this source as my opinions changed on the validity of it and how reliable it actually this. This is because I read that ‘This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Stem cell" All material adapted used from Wikipedia is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Wikipedia® itself is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc’.
This changed my views as it is from Wikipedia. However, most of the information on this website was supported by other websites and they all had similar information and findings on the research of stem cells.
Word Count: 3882
