The following is an excerpt.
Five diabetic beagles no longer needed insulin injections after being given two extra genes, with two of them still alive more than four years later.
Several attempts have been made to treat diabetes with gene therapy but this study is “the first to show a long-term cure for diabetes in a large animal”, says Fàtima Bosch, who treated the dogs at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain.
The two genes work together to sense and regulate how much glucose is circulating in the blood. People with type 1 diabetes lose this ability because the pancreatic cells that make insulin, the body’s usual sugar-controller, are killed by their immune system.
View the original article here: Gene therapy cures diabetic dogs
