A Modest Achievement

Just kidding—this is real news.  Researchers at St. Michael’s have reversed Type 1 diabetes in mice by injecting them with GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid); not a small thing.  Now a mouse is not a man, but this looks really promising.

In Type 1, beta cells in the pancreas are attacked by the immune system.  Dead beta cells do not produce insulin, hence diabetes. GABA apparently signals the immune system to leave the beta cells alone, restoring life and function to them.  It also signals the pancreas to grow more of them.

A team led by Dr. Qinghua Wang, in the division of endocrinology and metabolism, and Dr. Gerald Prud’homme, in the division of pathology, studied the role of GABA. Drs. Wang and Prud’homme are both clinician scientists in the Keenan Research Centre of the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s Hospital. Their findings were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Seriously, remember these guys.  They will be in history books and your kids will need to remember this to pass middle-school biology class.

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