by KYW's medical editor Dr. Brian McDonough
It is a risky procedure but it has gained a great deal of attention in the short time since it was introduced several months ago.
A report in the New England Journal of Medicine examined an experimental approach to treating type one diabetes, a risky procedure involving immune system destruction and reconstitution.
According to experts in the field, it's a drastic procedure, and type one diabetes, a form of diabetes where the body does not make enough insulin, can be treated with medications.
In other words, why not keep the condition at bay with less dramatic approaches and look for other answers? For instance, if scientists could come up with a way to eliminate the specific immune problem that's going on in type I diabetes that would be the way to go, not to eliminate the entire bone marrow but to just target the cells that were damaging the pancreas. Similar procedures are used to treat some types of cancer, but are associated with considerable infection risk and sometimes death.
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