A Possible Cure for Type I Diabetes on Horizon?

Researchers find possible solution for insulin dependence in type 1 diabetes

In what some are calling a potential cure for type 1 diabetes, researchers from UT Southwestern Medical Center have found that suppressing a single hormone may make the condition completely asymptomatic and eliminate the need for insulin injections.

Laboratory tests in mice showed that suppressing the hormone glucagon renders insulin unnecessary. Individuals who have type 1 diabetes who have the hormone suppressed may experience no side effects while going without insulin injections, the researchers said.

Their findings were reported in the latest issue of the journal Diabetes. They provide a new understanding of the role that insulin plays in the body, which may help researchers develop improved treatments and possibly even a cure for diabetes...

This is a big effing deal.  If this pans out, and the treatment is less annoying than a life of worrying about blood sugar, checking blood sugar and trying to titrate your own blood sugar level with shots of insulin, it offers freedom and health for countless people across the globe.  However, the research is still in the animal testing stage.  Will animal testing critics volunteer their diabetic children as guinea pigs to help speed the research? No? I didn't think so.

In hindsight, this seems kind of obvious.  Insulin and glucagon have opposite effects, insulin lowers blood sugar while glucagon tend to raise it, in a complex feed back loop.  But the history of science suggests that sometime we see the trees and not the forest. For examples, for years ulcer treatment focused on diet, until it was discovered a bacterial infection was responsible.