A controversial experimental cure for type 1 diabetes, using a tuberculosis vaccine invented a century ago, appears to temporarily vanquish the disease, according to a study in a handful of patients led by a scientist long criticized by her peers.
There is no guarantee the results from this early-stage trial, published on Wednesday in the journal PLoS One, will stand up in larger studies, which are now under way. Other diabetes researchers criticized it for going beyond the evidence in its claims about what caused the observed effects.
If the findings do hold up, however, they would mean that the generic bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine, in use since 1921, can regenerate insulin-secreting cells in the pancreas, whose loss causes the disease.
