Diabetes and its consequences may be treated safely, effectively and inexpensively by BCG. See eg faustmanlab.org, pubmed.org faustman dl and pubmed.org ristori + BCG. The US equates money and blood and when it is your money and your blood, you might pause to think that there is no incentive for others to point you to useful science and art as is the case with BCG which has been used all over the world for many years and should be freely available to those in the US.
Shoot BCG and or take the peptide designed by Faustman to cure autoimmune diseases and do not be blinded by Obama. Alas perhaps he would be more helpful to many if someone near and dear to him suffered from an autoimmune disease? Doubtful.
YOU CAN EASILY AND NON INVASIVLY MONITOR CHANGES IN THE EYE UPON THE ADMINISTRATION MULTIPLE LESS THAN A VACCINATION DOSE OF BCG OVER TIME.
SHOOT ME UP BEFORE MY PLANE LEAVES FOR YEMEN TO BUY BCG.
Result Filters
PLoS One. 2012;7(8):e41756. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0041756. Epub 2012 Aug 8.
Proof-of-concept, randomized, controlled clinical trial of Bacillus-Calmette-Guerin for treatment of long-term type 1 diabetes.
Faustman DL1, Wang L, Okubo Y, Burger D, Ban L, Man G, Zheng H, Schoenfeld D, Pompei R, Avruch J, Nathan DM.
Abstract
BACKGROUND:
No targeted immunotherapies reverse type 1 diabetes in humans. However, in a rodent model of type 1 diabetes, Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) reverses disease by restoring insulin secretion. Specifically, it stimulates innate immunity by inducing the host to produce tumor necrosis factor (TNF), which, in turn, kills disease-causing autoimmune cells and restores pancreatic beta-cell function through regeneration.METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:
Translating these findings to humans, we administered BCG, a generic vaccine, in a proof-of-principle, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of adults with long-term type 1 diabetes (mean: 15.3 years) at one clinical center in North America. Six subjects were randomly assigned to BCG or placebo and compared to self, healthy paired controls (n = 6) or reference subjects with (n = 57) or without (n = 16) type 1 diabetes, depending upon the outcome measure. We monitored weekly blood samples for 20 weeks for insulin-autoreactive T cells, regulatory T cells (Tregs), glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD) and other autoantibodies, and C-peptide, a marker of insulin secretion. BCG-treated patients and one placebo-treated patient who, after enrollment, unexpectedly developed acute Epstein-Barr virus infection, a known TNF inducer, exclusively showed increases in dead insulin-autoreactive T cells and induction of Tregs. C-peptide levels (pmol/L) significantly rose transiently in two BCG-treated subjects (means: 3.49 pmol/L [95% CI 2.95-3.8], 2.57 [95% CI 1.65-3.49]) and the EBV-infected subject (3.16 [95% CI 2.54-3.69]) vs.1.65 [95% CI 1.55-3.2] in reference diabetic subjects. BCG-treated subjects each had more than 50% of their C-peptide values above the 95(th) percentile of the reference subjects. The EBV-infected subject had 18% of C-peptide values above this level.CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE:
We conclude that BCG treatment or EBV infection transiently modified the autoimmunity that underlies type 1 diabetes by stimulating the host innate immune response. This suggests that BCG or other stimulators of host innate immunity may have value in the treatment of long-term diabetes.TRIAL REGISTRATION:
ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00607230.Comment in
- Targeting innate immunity to treat long-term type 1 diabetes. [Regen Med. 2012]
- PMID:
- 22905105
- [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
- PMCID:
- PMC3414482
At
a time of rising concern over the cost of medicine, a government-funded
study has found that three drugs, ranging in price from $50 to $1,950 a
dose, are equally effective in treating many cases of a common form of
vision loss caused by diabetes.
But
the most expensive drug — Eylea, sold by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals —
was more effective for patients who had poorer vision before starting
treatment.
“The
results certainly seem to suggest here that if you have 20/50 vision or
worse, you would certainly consider Eylea as the preferred drug,” said
Dr. John A. Wells, a retina specialist in West Columbia, S.C., who was
the chairman of the study, which was published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine.
The other two drugs — Lucentis, which costs $1,200 a dose, and the $50-a-dose Avastin — are both made by Genentech. The study tested the drugs as treatments for diabetic macular edema, which affects about 750,000 Americans. That and other visual complications from diabetes are the leading cause of blindness in working-age people.
The
disease is characterized by a welling of the macula, the part of the
eye responsible for sharp, straight-ahead vision, caused by fluid
leaking from capillaries in the retina. The three drugs act in a similar
manner to dry the leakage and are injected into the eye as frequently
as once every four weeks. While Lucentis and Eylea are approved to treat
macular edema, Avastin is a cancer drug used off label in tiny amounts to treat eye disease, which is why it costs so little.
The study was sponsored by the National Eye Institute,
part of the National Institutes of Health. Several years ago, before
Eylea reached the market, the institute sponsored a similar study
comparing Lucentis and Avastin as a treatment for a different eye
disease that also involves leaky blood vessels, the wet form of
age-related macular degeneration.
That study showed that the two drugs were roughly equivalent, helping legitimize the off-label use of Avastin, which saves Medicare
at least $1 billion a year. For macular degeneration, the dose of
Lucentis is higher than for diabetic macular edema, costing about $2,000
per injection.
But
there might not be as much savings from this new study, which involved
660 adults. After one year, those randomly chosen to be treated with
Eylea had an average improvement of 13.3 letters on an eye chart,
compared with 11.2 for Lucentis and 9.7 for Avastin.
For
about half the patients, those with vision of 20/40 or better at the
start of the study, all the drugs provided an average gain in vision of
about 8 letters. But for the other half, with 20/50 or worse eyesight to
start, the average improvement was 18.9 letters for Eylea compared with
14.2 for Lucentis and 11.8 for Avastin.
Among
these patients with worse vision, 67 percent in the Eylea group had an
improvement of at least 15 letters, or three lines on an eye chart, a
level experts say is clearly meaningful. Only 50 percent of those
treated with Lucentis and 41 percent treated with Avastin gained that
much vision.
The
study did find that patients getting Eylea needed slightly fewer
injections and less of a backup treatment using lasers. That could help
offset the higher cost per dose of Eylea.
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