For a while now, people have been using the drug Verapamil. It’s an effective medicine for high blood pressure and migraines as well as cardiac arrhythmia. It has also proved to have no severe side effects throughout it’s entire 3o year shelf life since it’s approval by the FDA in 1982. It has also made it to the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines. And now it seems that it has been found to cure a much more fierce disease, Diabetes.
Researchers from the University of Alabama have revealed that tests on mice have shown that type 1 and 2 diabetes can be completely cured by administering Verapamil. To understand how, one must understand what causes diabetes.
In the past few years, studies have shown that Diabetes is linked to a protein produced in the pancreas called TXNIP. This protein exists in “beta cells” inside the islets of Langerhans region of the pancreas; this region is responsible for producing insulin (the hormone that helps regulate blood sugar levels). When TXNIP is overproduced during high blood pressure, it was found that the pancreas would kill off its beta cells to bring the insulin level down. This in turn resulted in a shortage of insulin when the need arose and led to diabetes.
Verapamil lowers the levels of TXNIP and hence saves the beta cells from destruction. What’s more, it has been found to eradicate diabetes when tested on mice.
The green light has been given for human trials along with $2 million. The study will involve 52 people between the ages of 19 and 45 diagnosed with type 1 or 2 diabetes taking placebos or Verapamil for 12 months. If the tests yield a positive result it could mean the purge of diabetes from the world’s stage and medicine could finally boast the eradication of another disease after smallpox.