Deb Butterfield was told as a child that if she watched her diet closely and took her insulin religiously, she'd be able to control her diabetes.
In her mid-30s, she had severe nerve damage, kidney failure and was going blind. Still, she was afraid of the kidney-pancreas transplant that would eventually liberate her.Now executive director of the Insulin-Free World Foundation, Butterfield brought a simple message to people with diabetes and those who love them in Utah Tuesday and Wednesday: Insulin is not the only option for diabetics. And despite understandable fears one might have about undergoing a transplant, pancreas transplants are saving hundreds of diabetics every year.
And promising research indicates that even that drastic step may not be needed soon, she said.
The incidence of diabetes has tripled in the past 50 years and will double again in 20 more, she said. It's the leading cause of blindness, amputation (56,000 limbs every year) and kidney disease. One-fourth of all Medicare dollars are spent on diabetes and its complications. It kills more people than breast cancer and AIDS combined each year. And the age group with the fastest-growing incidence rate is children younger than 15.
In Utah, some 116,000 people have diabetes. New cases have increased 70 percent since 1981.
Against that backdrop, she said, people have to get serious about finding a cure for diabetes. Her foundation has joined forces with the Fast Track to a Cure Program, to raise money to support research efforts at the University of Minnesota's Diabetes Institute for Immunology and Transplantation, the Diabetes Research Institute in Florida and the Scripps Whittier Diabetes Institute in San Diego. All three facilities are working on different aspects of a cure, Butterfield said.
All the money donated will go to the research, thanks to a grant from Bridge Information Systems that covers the cost of fund-raising efforts.
At the centers in Minnesota and Miami, for example, researchers are beginning human clinical trials on the potential of eyelets and cells to deal with diabetes. "They're learning they can take a cell and multiply it, manipulate it, engineer it; take a stem cell and teach it to make insulin. Or add a growth factor and get it to multiple 30,000 times," said Butterfield. That's one accomplishment from the center in San Diego.
Until that research has proven itself and eradicated diabetes, she said, people need to give serious thought to pancreas transplants. Unlike many organ transplants, there are not huge waiting lists. "It's not like a liver transplant where there's a huge surgery and a huge scarcity of livers. Extra pancreases are available."
Allocation choices are different, as well. While the national debate rages on whether livers should be distributed geographically or based on who is deemed the sickest, "in the diabetic community, we've escaped that controversy so far. And the success rate is 83 percent. As the world figures that out, there will not be enough to go around."
By that time, she hopes, researchers will have figured out how to use those eyelets and cells and teach the pancreas to do its job without needing a new organ or insulin injections.
All it will take, she said, is time. And money.