Pancreas

A 26-year-old woman underwent what doctors said was the world's first heart-liver-kidney transplant Sunday. Cindy Martin of Archbald was listed in critical condition Sunday night, considered normal after a transplant operation, said Lisa Rossi, a spokeswoman for University-Presbyterian Hospital. The operation began at 7:35 p.m. Saturday and ended at 5 p.m. Sunday, Rossi said.

For Terra Hillyer, who has Type 1 diabetes, enrolling in a clinical trial for a new medical device called the artificial pancreas provided a glimpse of what life might be like without the constant checks of blood sugar levels and infusions of insulin that currently mark her days. “The first thing I do when I wake up is check my blood sugar,” Hillyer says. “It is the background noise of my life.” Except for one day recently, when the mother of two checked into the Sansum Diabetes Research Institute in Santa Barbara.

A race is on to find a way to cure Type 1 diabetes by regenerating the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas that are lost in the disease. Without them, the body is unable to metabolize sugar, forcing patients to compensate by injecting themselves with insulin several times a day. One popular strategy has been to try to get embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotent stem cells -- which can theoretically become any type of human cell -- to...

For the third straight year, the number of organ donors in the United States has remained level at about 4,500, leaving thousands of people without the heart, liver, kidney, lung or pancreas transplantations they desperately need, reports the Assn. of Organ Procurement Organizations. In recent years, the decrease in traffic fatalities has reduced the number of possible donors.

The Food and Drug Administration has announced that it will investigate whether a new class of Type 2 diabetes drugs sometimes called the "gliptins" may increase patients' risk of developing precancerous changes in the pancreas, as well as of developing acute pancreatitis. The drugs now under closer FDA scrutiny are called incretin mimetics and include such widely prescribed medications as the drug exenitide (marketed as Byetta and Bydureon), liraglutide (Victoza), sitagliptin (Januvia and Janumet or Juvisync)

A team of European doctors has tested an “artificial pancreas” aimed at helping pregnant women with Type 1 diabetes control their blood sugar. The goal? To lower their risk of having an abnormal birth or a fatal episode of hypoglycemia. Funded by the charitable foundation Diabetes UK , the research explores the during-pregnancy potential of a device the size of a cellphone. This "pancreas" has a continuous glucose monitor and an insulin pump that maintains a reliable level of blood sugar.

Men with Type 1 diabetes may eventually have a way to provide tissues for their own beta-cell transplants, reseachers have found. Stem cells that normally grow into sperm can be prodded to change into insulin-producing beta-cells instead, researchers from the Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington reported at the recent Philadelphia meeting of the American Society of Cell Biology. If the technology can be scaled up and improved, it could eliminate many of the problems now associated with the use of stem cell technology and pancreas transplants.

Public Enemy No. 1 in America's battle of the bulge isn't cupcakes, soda or double bacon cheeseburgers. It's the simple potato, according to Harvard University researchers. Daily consumption of an extra serving of spuds — French fries, crispy chips, mashed with butter and garlic, or simply boiled or baked — was found to cause more weight gain than downing an additional 12-ounce can of a sugary drink or taking an extra helping of red or processed meats. Altogether, after tracking the good and bad diet and lifestyle choices of more than 120,000 health professionals from around the country for at least 12 years, the research team calculated that participants gained an average of 0.8 of a pound a year, close to the U.S. average, according to a report published in Thursday's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Pancreas transplants, once touted as a possible cure for diabetes, now appear to be a source of treatment for only a limited number of diabetics, while research into other treatments and prevention of the disease holds more promise, a Harvard Medical School professor said Tuesday. Dr. George F. Cahill, in an interview at the American Diabetes Assn.

Dr. David Scharp figures he just got the chance of a lifetime. For two decades, the noted St. Louis surgeon has been working on new treatments for diabetics. He joined Neocrin Inc. recently and found himself in the thick of a race to develop a new method for attacking diabetes. The small research firm is on the cutting edge of technology as it experiments with an implant that can act like a pancreas and eliminate the need for insulin injections. "This is the assault on the summit!"