A new probiotic pill containing live bacteria radically reduces the level of glucose in the blood stream and could revolutionise the treatment of diabetes. Some experts were dubbing the pill as a potential cure for diabetes.
Professor John March of Cornell University, New York led the research which used rats. The probiotic contained a common strain of friendly bacteria called lactobacillus, which had been engineered to produce a specific peptide. The peptide acts as a hormone releasing insulin in response to food. This thus bypasses any failure in the pancreas that occurs in type-2 or type-1 diabetes.
Put simply, the work of the failed pancreas has now been replaced by a genetically modified bacterium. Your friendly bacteria really do help you!! In the experiments with rats, those that had been given the modified probiotics had blood sugar levels 30% below those that were given nothing. The probiotics shifted glucose metabolism to the cells in the upper intestine.
