Analysis of Type I Diabetic Patients for Planning Pancreatic Islet Cell Transplantation in Nagasaki

Abstract

Pancreatic islet cell transplantation (IT) has now been a treatment of choice for the type I diabetes mellitus (DM), and the demand for IT is increasing. With the aim to grasp the present state and to survey the prospects of IT management in Nagasaki, we reviewed 75 type I DM patients who had been followed at the First Department of Internal Medicine of Nagasaki University Hospital. Among the 75 patients, 3 cases (4%) were judged to be candidates for IT according to the Japanese Islet Transplant Registry criteria. In addition, the estimated number of newly developing candidate for IT was one per year in Nagasaki prefecture, based on the epidemiologic factors including the annual incidence rate of type I DM patients in Japan, the population of Nagasaki prefecture, and the proportion of IT candidates among the type I DM patients followed at Nagasaki University Hospital. These results indicated that if an institute in Nagasaki newly constructs a standard IT unit and to run it in accordance with the Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP), they should cooperate with other laboratory units operating cell therapy, since GMP entails large amount of running costs.