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Archive for August, 2009
Brown Fat
August 31st, 2009
We are told that if you are overweight it is your own fault for eating too much! The logic is like a tub of water where the water stands for food energy. To live and move a certain amount of water drains out of the tub, so you eat to fill the tub again. The energy level drops an inch, so we eat, it goes up an inch, and our weight remains the same. Very simple, but only partly true.
Benfotiamine Pharmaceutical Therapy May be Alternative to Islets Transplants
August 17th, 2009
You are probably aware of the increasing interest in benfotiamine as an oral medication to prevent the metabolism of excess glucose in diabetics to the advanced glycation end products which are the ultimate cause of diabetic complications. This drug has a half-century record of use as an extremely safe over-the-counter remedy for alcoholic neuritis. Although data began emerging in the mid-1990s showing its capacity to block the formation of diabetic complications from excess blood sugar, it was only with M. Brownlee’s publication of its effectiveness in Nature: Medicine in February, 2003, that interest in benfotiamine really took off.
Life Expectancy of Encapsulated Islets
August 17th, 2009
I wonder if any differentially permeable membrane screen against immunological attack can work in principle. Since these devices rely on diffusion of nutrients across the membrane while nature uses vascularization to achieve cell nutrition, I suspect that encapsulated beta cells will always have a life expectancy so short that they will simply not be cost-effective, especially if they cannot provide sufficient blood glucose control to allow patients to live without chasing blood sugar levels with injected insulin.
Consequences of Cell Death in Islet Sheets?
August 17th, 2009
I wonder what happens when the encapsulated beta cells decay? Decaying tissue collapses into a wide variety of particles of different dimensions, so what ensures that they will not leak into the abdomen, which is literally a perfect medium ready to magnify even the slightest infection into instant peritonitis.
Is Partial Control Good Enough?
August 17th, 2009
If patients have to fill in the difference between the control achieved with the beta cell encapsulated implant and the physiologic levels they are striving for, the shortfall may mean that there will not be much improvement in the complications. This is clear from the fact that even slight increases in blood sugar produce measurable worsening of complications…
