People with type 1 diabetes may continue making their own insulin for decades, challenging assumptions that they stop production within a couple of years of diagnosis.

The surprise finding suggests that some of the pancreatic cells responsible for making the hormone survive in those with diabetes, raising hopes that they can be regenerated.

“People thought [the cells] all decay away after about a year,” says Denise Faustman of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who led the team that made the find.

Faustman’s team screened the blood of 182 people with diabetes to search for C-peptide, a protein made exclusively during insulin production. Faustman found it in 80 per cent of people who had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes within the last five years. She even detected it in 10 per cent of those who had been diagnosed 31 to 40 years previously.


Faustman says the findings raise hopes that it may be possible for people to recover from the condition, if surviving insulin-producing cells can be protected or regenerated, as has been tried using stem cell and immune re-tuning treatments.

“If it’s true that C-peptide persists and remains functional for longer than previously suspected then there’s a bigger window of opportunity for new treatments aimed at preserving [insulin-producing] cell function,” says Iain Frame, director of research at London-based charity Diabetes UK. “These treatments might benefit more people with type 1 diabetes than previously thought.”

Journal reference: Diabetes Care, DOI: 10.2337/dc11-1236