10:48am UK, Monday April 21, 2003

New research into diabetes holds out hope of a cure from the disabling condition which affects around 1.4m people in Britain.

180 needle syringe diabetes

Experimental gene therapy has cured mice of diabetes, and although work is at a very early stage, scientists hope the technique will one day free people from its effects.

United States scientists introduced a gene to the mice that enabled their livers to generate insulin.

Professor Lawrence Chan, who led the research at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, said: "It's a proof of principle. The exciting part of it is that mice with diabetes are 'cured'."

Liver cells were induced to become beta cells that produce insulin and three other hormones.

Beta cells are normally found within small bodies embedded in the pancreas, called "islets".

Transplanting islets is one of the ways diabetes can be treated, but a compatible donor must be found and the patient has to take powerful immunosuppressive drugs.

The condition occurs when glucose sugar is not used properly to fuel cells, but builds up in the blood. If not treated, a person with diabetes will ultimately lapse into a coma and die.