N=1 study should not have made it into headlines.

> Although the research marks a milestone in the search for treatments of type 1 diabetes, it’s important to note that the study involved one one participant, who received a low dose of cells for a short period—not enough for the patient to no longer need to control their blood sugar with injected insulin. An editorial by the journal Nature also says that some independent research groups have failed in their efforts to confirm that Sana’s method provides edited cells with the ability to evade the immune system.

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thecosas 3 days ago | parent [-]

Despite that, glad to see it in a human subject.

I’ve had T1D for more than 30 years and have seen every headline under the sun with a “cure” always sometime in the next 5 years, so my expectations are properly tempered.

Still excited by it but a long way from clinics handing this out as a solution (if it’s viable).

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consp 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

5 years is modern for a long time. Used to be in the next decades. I've had it for about the same time and about 10 years ago I stopped following all research since it never goes anywhere. I'll wait till they start doing late stage trails to be even interested to read the full report.

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JackeJR 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The thing is that with such a sample, we don't really know

1. If the effect is real. i.e. had the patient not been given the injection, would his/her condition improve spontaneously.

2. Assuming the effect is real, what are the circumstances that make the treatment work for this person.

Not to be overly dismissive of the good work but it is too early to be optimistic about this given the above and the fact that the results were not replicated out of Sana suggest that there is a lot that we need to work out before this becomes a viable treatment for the masses.

The harms of hyping this up is that readers will get their hopes up and then be disappointed when things don't pan out as do most scientific endeavours. Overtime, readers will learn to distrust anything that is being reported because 90% of which do not translate to real world impact. It is hard to get the nuance that "science takes many many failures and iterations" to the public and the more likely outcome of such reporting is general distrust of science when things don't go the way that is hoped for.

	▲	malfist 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Type 1 diabetes does not spontaneously resolve