New Drug to Fight Diabetes

Tuesday 11th May 2010

A new drug has been developed that could treat type 1 diabetes in just six days. Early research indicates that the drug, otelixizumab, seems to stop the body's pancreas-damaging immune response to diabetes if administered shortly after the condition has been diagnosed.


The drug is currently undergoing clinical trials, but manufacturers claim that the medication could change the lives of the millions of British people currently living with type 1 diabetes. Researchers claim that drug could also be key to developing better treatments for conditions including rheumatoid arthritis, psoaris and more.

The new treatment, administered over a course of six injections, works by using an antibody to seek and destroy T-cells produced in error by the immune system, that left unchecked, would attacks and damage insulin producing cells in the pancreas.

Diabetes UK have welcomed further research and advances into this type of treatment - which reduces the number of injections that diabetes sufferers need to administer daily in order to regulate their body's insulin levels. The drug, if trialled successfully, could be
available in Britain by 2015.


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