AbstractsMedical & Health Science

The crowning achievement of the experimental study of diabetes has, so far, been the isolation and purification of insulin. Through this agent we have at our disposal an effective means of controlling clinical cases of diabetes and thus considerably improving the prognosis of the disease. The task of the experimental investigation of the disease, however, is far from having been completed. Not only are many of its biochemical mechanisms still obscure, but even the morphological changes in the islets of Langerhans, which are probably of fundamental importance, are only poorly understood. More than seventy years after the first description of islet lesions we have to admit our inability to determine with certainty the presence or absence of diabetes by histological methods. [...]The prospect of finding a permanent cure for the disease, which must always remain the ultimate aim of medical research, does not appear to be as remote as in most other diseases of advanced age. The islet tissue of both human patients and experimental animals frequently shows marked regenerative activity which, however, appears clinically ineffective. It is one of the more immediate tasks at present confronting morphological research to relate the changes in the islets to the clinical state of the patient and to find criteria for the determination of the functional state of the islet cell. Only then can the cause of their occasional apparent inactivity be determined.[...]