Health Glance
We can also offer a pancreas transplant, as the pancreas contains the insulin-making cells, but this is major surgery with a three-to-six month recovery time.
But with islet cell transplantation we transplant just the islet cells which make insulin, instead of the entire pancreas.
There are risks - the patient needs to take immunosuppressants for life, to stop the body rejecting the donor cells, leaving them vulnerable to anaemia, infection and cancer.
No more daily jabs or endless blood tests... The 30-minute op to give diabetics their lives back
The transplant revolution
A 10-year-old boy has undergone pioneering surgery in which his own body worked as a "bioreactor" to help a donated windpipe, seeded with his own stem cells, grow into a fully functioning organ.
The boy, who is British, is the first child in the world to undergo the revolutionary transplantation. The development takes transplant surgery a step closer to the goal of replacing damaged or worn-out organs with functioning replacements that are not rejected by the body, which are in increasing demand as life expectancy grows.
It also opens up the prospect of treating damaged organs with stem cells to stimulate self-repair, potentially avoiding the need for a transplant.
Ex-Pfizer Worker Cites Genetically Engineered Virus In Lawsuit Over Firing
Medical experts will be watching closely Monday when a scientist who says she has been intermittently paralyzed by a virus designed at the Pfizer laboratory where she worked in Groton opens a much anticipated trial that could raise questions about safety practices in the dynamic field of genetic engineering.
Glaxo funded backers of 'danger' drug (Avandia)
More than nine out of 10 scientists who backed a drug at the centre of a safety scare had financial links to the pharmaceutical industry, a study has found.
The disclosure will renew concern about the influence of the multinational companies on patient safety, where a warning about a drug can wipe billions from their balance sheets.
FDA warns of greater muscle risk from Zocor
The Food and Drug Administration said Friday the highest available dose of Zocor, a component in cholesterol drugs, can cause muscle damage as well as severe and potentially lethal kidney damage.
The agency said statin drugs like Zocor are known to cause muscle damage in some patients, but the risk is more severe when patients are taking 80 milligram doses of Zocor, which is the highest FDA-approved dose.
The side effects include rhabdomyolysis, a form of muscle damage that can lead to kidney damage or failure, and death. Zocor is the brand name for the drug used by Merck & Co. of Whitehouse Station, N.J. Its chemical name is simvastatin.
Pepsi to pull sugar-sweetened drinks from schools worldwide
Anti-obesity campaigns scored a direct hit today when PepsiCo said it would pull its sugary drinks from schools around the world. PepsiCo, No. 2 worldwide to the Coca-Cola Co., set a 2012 date for removal of all of its full-calorie, sweetened drinks from schools in more than 200 countries by 2012.
PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and others in the industry have already swapped lower-calorie options into schools to replace sugary drinks, under voluntary guidelines adopted in 2006. Sales of full-calorie soft drinks fell 95 percent in U.S. schools between fall 2004 and fall 2009, the American Beverage Association reported last week.
Coke this month said it no longer would sell its other sweetened drinks in grade schools unless parents or school officials asked it to. But Coke didn't extend that change to secondary schools, and today after the Pepsi move Coke said it thought school officials "should have the right to choose what is best for their schools."
Vitamin D better than vaccines at preventing flu, report claims
Vitamin D was found to be even more effective when the comparison left out children who were already given extra vitamin D by their parents, outside the trial. Taking the sunshine vitamin was then shown to reduce the risk of flu to a third of what it would otherwise be.
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