New drug delays the onset of diabetes

New research has shown that an experimental drug, designed to reset the body's immune system, could delay the need for extra insulin in some people with recently diagnosed juvenile diabetes.

In at least 12 of 40 volunteers diagnosed with diabetes six days of injections of the antibody drug, ChAgylCD3, appeared to stop the destruction of insulin-producing beta cells less than three weeks before receiving the treatment.

Robert Goldstein, chief science officer at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International, which financed the study, says that if the treatment proves to be safe and not toxic, hopefully it could be used to prevent or to delay the onset of the disease.

Of the remaining subjects in the study group, 24, had already lost most of their beta cells, suggesting that the sooner the patient receives the therapy, the more effective it will be.

Ake Lernmark of the University of Washington in Seattle, says that this could also limit the therapy's applicability.

Doctors are still monitoring patients where the drug worked and the benefits lasted for 18 months, to determine whether the impact could last even longer.

Lernmark said that if the treatment proves to be safe, it may be reasonable for doctors to start giving it to people who face a genetic risk of juvenile diabetes and who show early signs that their beta cells are under attack.

As many as 40,000 Americans, mostly children but some much older, develop juvenile diabetes each year, and by the time symptoms appear, 80 to 90 percent of the beta cells in the pancreas have already been destroyed.

In the study, which was conducted in Europe, all of the patients had been diagnosed with the so-called type 1 diabetes less than three weeks before getting the drug.

Richard Insel, JDRF's executive vice president for research, says for people who suffer from other diseases where the body turns on itself, continuous treatment is usually required, but with this therapy treatment is used for a very brief period of time and then stopped.He says that is very important.

Insel says the treatment would be of no help to people who develop adult-onset or type 2 diabetes.

The antibody, also known as TRX4, was developed privately by TolerRx Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The research team, which was led by Bert Keymeulen of Brussels Free University, found that while the 40 volunteers who received placebo injections needed 50 percent more insulin after 18 months, the 40 who received the antibody drug needed 12 percent less.

The study is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.