Oxygen Therapy Slows Type 1 Diabetes in Mice, Study Says

May 11th, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

FRIDAY, May 11 (HealthDay News) — Treatment with hyperbaric
oxygen therapy helped prevent or slow the progression of type 1 diabetes
in mice, according to new research.

It is too early to say if the results might apply to humans,
however.

In mice, the treatment caused changes in the immune system’s response
to newly developing diabetes, and reduced the risk of diabetes between 20
and 40 percent. In the mice that still developed diabetes, the hyperbaric
therapy delayed disease progression, the investigators found.

“Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is a relatively non-harmful way of enhancing
oxygen delivery to the tissues,” said the study’s senior author, Dr.
Antonello Pileggi, director of the preclinical cell processing and
translational models program at the Diabetes Research Institute of the
University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

“We were able to suppress the transfer of the disease (in mice) before
the onset of the disease. After diabetes had occurred, the efficacy [of
hyperbaric therapy] was much less,” said Pileggi. He said that combining
hyperbaric therapy with medications might enhance the effectiveness of
both treatments.

Results of this study, released online May 7, will be published in the
July print issue of Diabetes.

In type 1 diabetes, the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy cells
in the pancreas called beta cells. Beta cells produce the hormone insulin
that allows your body to metabolize carbohydrates from food, providing
fuel for energy. People with type 1 diabetes must replace the lost insulin
through multiple daily injections or a pump.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy — commonly used to treat scuba divers who
develop “the bends” from rising to the surface too quickly — is delivered
in a special pressurized chamber. The pressure inside the chamber is about
two and half times greater than the normal pressure in the atmosphere,
according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine. This puts more oxygen
in your blood. Hyperbaric therapy can also be used to treat bone
infections, burns, carbon monoxide poisoning, and wounds that aren’t
healing well, such as ulcers in people with diabetes. Currently, not very
many hospitals offer hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

For the current research, Pileggi and his colleagues used two types of
mice. One type develops diabetes spontaneously. It’s not exactly the same
as type 1 diabetes in humans, but it is very similar, and Pileggi said
“it’s a good surrogate of type 1.” And, the second type doesn’t develop
diabetes on its own, but the researchers induced diabetes.

In the mice that spontaneously develop diabetes that received
hyperbaric therapy, the risk of developing diabetes was reduced by 20
percent. In the mice with induced diabetes, the treatment reduced the risk
of diabetes by 40 percent, according to the study. In the mice that still
developed diabetes in both groups, treatment with hyperbaric therapy
helped delay the onset or progression of the disease.

Pileggi said that the researchers aren’t yet clear exactly how
hyperbaric therapy prevents or slows the disease, but it’s clear the
therapy has positive effects on the immune system.

The researchers were also pleasantly surprised to see that the therapy
caused a significant increase in creation of new beta cells. “If you can
reeducate immune cells and enhance the beta cell mass, that’s an ideal
situation. But, it’s not a silver bullet for diabetes. It could be an
adjuvant to other therapies,” said Pileggi.

Pileggi said the researchers will test combination treatments but added
that it’s too soon to guess when such a treatment might be tried in
humans.

Another expert said any application to humans is years away.

“This is a novel idea from a good research group. But, while the mouse
model is good to study, it doesn’t mean that what is affected in mice will
be affected in men,” said Dr. Joel Zonszein, director of the clinical
diabetes center at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City.

Also, it would be difficult to choose who would receive such a therapy,
he said, because there isn’t a reliable test to determine who will develop
type 1 diabetes. There are tests for the antibodies present in type 1, but
some people who never develop diabetes have those same antibodies.

“To translate this research to humans would require many more steps,”
said Zonszein.

More information

Learn more about type 1 diabetes from the American Diabetes Association.