In recent years, islet transplants have started to present hope to people with Type I diabetes. In this kind of diabetes, formerly known as juvenile diabetes, little insulin-producing blobs in the pancreas known as the islets of Langerhans are destroyed. That loss of insulin is why people with Type I diabetes have to stick themselves with needles all the time. So transplanting healthy islets into diabetics seems like a good idea. The problem is, until now, the islets from two to four donors have been needed to get one transplant to work. This week, researchers at the University of Minnesota‑Minneapolis report good news for diabetics: success at using the islets from only one donor.

What the researchers wanted to know: Can one pancreas supply enough islets for a transplant?

What they did: First, the researchers came up with a protocol to increase the chance their single-pancreas method would work. This included a particular way of preparing the islets and a whole song and dance with immunosuppressive drugs (you have to suppress the immune system of someone who's getting a transplant or they'll—quite sensibly—reject the foreign material). Since you're probably not going to try this at home, I don't feel too guilty about skipping the details. Between July 2001 and August 2003, they tried out the procedure on eight patients who met certain criteria. Coincidentally, all of the patients were women.

What they found: All eight of the patients became insulin-independent. Within a year, though, three had gone back on insulin. One of the three made it only seven days without insulin. None of the eight had complications from the procedure, serious infections, or unexpected adverse events. There were some expected adverse events, however, like a short-term shortage of one kind of white blood cells.

What the study means to you: Donor organs are hard to get hold of, and being able to use only one per transplant should make islet transplants available to more people. It will take more research to figure out who is most likely to be helped by this kind of surgery, though.

Caveats: Note that three of the eight people went through the discomfort of surgery and ended up back where they started. Also, the researchers had only a year of follow-up; it will take longer to tell if this works long term.

Find out more: A little history and information about islet transplants from the American Diabetes Association

Read the article: Hering, B.J. et al. "Single-Donor, Marginal-Dose Islet Transplantation in Patients With TypeI Diabetes." Journal of the American Medical Association. Feb. 16, 2005, Vol. 293, No. 7, pp. 830-835.

Abstract online: http://jama.ama-assn.org