A diabetes drug could help with autoimmune diseases
Autoimmune Diseases and T Cells
Autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus are diseases in which your immune system mistakenly attacks healthy cells.
Your immune system has T cells, a type of white blood cell that normally fights infection and disease. However, in autoimmune diseases, these T cells attack your healthy tissues instead.
The potential of canagliflozin
Swansea University researchers have made an interesting discovery. They found that a drug used to treat type 2 diabetes, canagliflozin, could potentially be used to treat autoimmune diseases.
You may be wondering: how does a diabetes drug help with autoimmune diseases? Well, canagliflozin, also known as Invokana, controls blood sugar levels in people with diabetes.
But these researchers found that it also plays another unexpected role. It targets T cells, making it a potential weapon against autoimmune diseases.
This is supported by existing research suggesting that targeting T-cell metabolism could have therapeutic benefits in autoimmune diseases.
Their new study, published in the journal Cell Metabolism, showed that canagliflozin decreased T-cell activation. This suggests that the drug could be used to treat autoimmune diseases caused by T cells.
From diabetes to autoimmune diseases
dr Nick Jones, who led the study, said its findings are significant. They form the basis for the use of canagliflozin in the treatment of certain autoimmune diseases.
An advantage of this drug is that it is already widely used and has a known safety profile in humans.
This means it may get to the clinic quicker than newly developed drugs, and quickly bring benefits to patients with autoimmune diseases.
Ben Jenkins, first author of the study and a postdoc at Swansea, said it would be exciting to find new roles for drugs currently used in other diseases.
He hopes their findings, which mainly target immune cell metabolism, could have potential therapeutic benefits for a variety of diseases.
Researchers are optimistic about the potential of canagliflozin. They hope that in the future it will enter a clinical trial to treat certain autoimmune diseases.
If successful, this could open a new chapter in the treatment of autoimmune diseases.
If you are interested in diabetes, please read studies on a cure for type 2 diabetes and this vegetable may protect against kidney damage in diabetes.
For more information on diabetes, see recent studies on a major breakthrough in diabetes treatment and new therapies for diabetes that are still effective two years later.
The study was published In cellular metabolism.
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