DAZZLING but controversial claims about a stem-cell treatment for diabetes now seem to have been borne out. The latest results indicate that the initial positive response was indeed due to the treatment and not simply to better care, as critics suggested in 2007.
The treatment is designed to stop the immune systems of people with type 1 diabetes from destroying the pancreatic islet cells that make insulin, the hormone which regulates sugar concentrations in blood. A team led by Júlio Voltarelli of the Regional Blood Centre in Ribeirão Preto in southern Brazil took blood from 15 patients and saved the…
