Article #5

http://www.livescience.com/37766-type-1-diabetes-reverse-vaccine-tol3021.html

"Reverse Vaccine" May Fight Type I Diabetes  by Joseph Brownstein 

The current science event I chose to write about is the reverse vaccine for people with Type I diabetes. What happens when you have diabetes is that antibodies in the body attack the cells that make insulin. What has been developed is a treatment called TOL-3021 which uses a circular piece of DNA to attack the antibodies that would then attack the cells that produce insulin. A 12-week program was done and the people involved remained the same levels of insulin or went up. The reason it has the name "reverse vaccine" is because vaccines go in your body and switch on your immune system whereas this treatment is turning off part of the immune system. The process is to turn off the part of the immune system that is attacking the pancreas but nothing else. One conclusion found was that after the injections were made then the insulin amounts went down so it's not a permanent fix. This treatment has potential to become much more useful for other autoimmune diseases as well where the antibodies are known that cause the diseases. There is more study needing to be done to figure out the long-term effects. 

I decided to read up on this science event because I have a very close family friend who has Type I Diabetes and has struggled with his health for a long time. He gives himself shots everyday for his insulin since his body no longer produces enough and if there was an alternative to this I think he would jump on it. I think diabetes is such an unfortunate disease because Type I seems to come to young people who aren't overweight and unhealthy. If there was something that could help cure this disease it would be a great achievement in the medical world. I also liked reading this article because it shows how much research goes into findings for treatments of diseases or medicines before they are sent out for public use. This is a comforting idea because you want to know what is going into your body before you do so. The scientific process for experimentation with using different variables and trial-and-error is there for a reason. It is amazing to me that someone out there thought this was a good idea for this certain disease and went with it. I hope that the continued research and observations are able to lead to some success.