An oral medication shows benefits treating Type 1 diabetes for at least two years after diagnosis (Cheap calcium channel blocker reduces insulin need & helps beta cells)

Medical Xpress / Nature Communications / University of Alabama at Birmingham ^ | Mar. 3, 2022 | Michael J. LaMonte, Ph.D. et al

[ConservativeMind]

Use of the drug verapamil to treat Type 1 diabetes continues to show benefits lasting at least two years, researchers report. Patients taking the oral blood pressure medication not only required less daily insulin two years after first diagnosis of the disease, but also showed evidence of surprising immunomodulatory benefits.

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that causes loss of pancreatic beta cells, which produce endogenous insulin. There is no current oral treatment for this disease.

In 2018, Shalev and colleagues reported finding that regular oral administration of verapamil enabled patients to produce higher levels of their own insulin, thus limiting their need for injected insulin to regulate blood sugar levels.

The current study extends on that finding.

The top serum protein altered by verapamil treatment was chromogranin A, or CHGA. CHGA is localized in secretory granules, including those of pancreatic beta cells, suggesting that changed CHGA levels might reflect alterations in beta cell integrity.

Serum CHGA levels in healthy, non-diabetic volunteers were about twofold lower compared to subjects with Type 1 diabetes, and after one year of verapamil treatment, verapamil-treated Type 1 diabetes subjects had similar CHGA levels compared with healthy individuals. In the second year, CHGA levels continued to drop in verapamil-treated subjects.

Other labs have identified CHGA as an autoantigen in Type 1 diabetes that provokes immune T cells involved in the autoimmune disease. They found that several proinflammatory markers of T follicular helper cells, including CXCR5 and interleukin 21, were significantly elevated in monocytes from subjects with Type 1 diabetes, as compared to healthy controls, and they found that these changes were reversed by verapamil treatment.

"Now our results reveal for the first time that verapamil treatment may also affect the immune system and reverse these Type 1 diabetes-induced changes," Shalev said.

[ConservativeMind]

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