Role in Diabetes Study Offers Hope to at-Risk Student

Tim Tynan Jr. has watched his mother and two sisters live the diabetic’s routine of daily insulin shots and restrictive diets and hoped it wouldn’t happen to him.

His hopes got a boost Wednesday when Tynan, a high school senior from Anaheim Hills, became the first person in the state picked to take part in a landmark national study into whether limited preventive treatment can fend off diabetes before it develops.

“I hope it’ll delay me from getting diabetes for longer--maybe until they get a cure,” said Tynan, 18.

Tynan, who was judged by doctors to have a high risk of developing diabetes, will receive small doses of insulin for the next five to six years and will be tested regularly by doctors at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, one of more than 200 health facilities nationwide taking part in the year-old study.

Researchers hope that testing of about 800 people across the country will show whether limited advance treatment can shore up the body enough to prevent--or at least impede--a form of the disease that afflicts mainly those under 40 years old.

“The exciting thing is, this is the first time there is a national study looking for a way to prevent diabetes,” said Bruce Buckingham, the physician directing the research at CHOC.

Tynan’s mother, Claudia Tynan, who signed him up for the trial last year after reading about it in a newspaper, was ecstatic after learning that her son had been chosen at random Wednesday by computer.

“It can’t help my daughters; my daughters already have diabetes,” said Claudia Tynan, a nurse at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Anaheim. “But if we can identify who’s going to get diabetes and stop that, that’s hopeful for my son and everybody else.”

Diabetes affects more than 12 million Americans and is the nation’s leading cause of blindness.

The seven-year trial, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, targets Type I (or insulin-dependent) diabetes, the less common of two forms of the diseased and the one that mostly hits young people. This type of diabetes is caused when the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks the cells that produce insulin, a hormone needed to help the body use blood sugar.

Tim Tynan, a three-sport athlete who works at a commercial recreation facility, was a candidate for the experiment because he has close relatives with diabetes. Blood tests over several months indicated he was at a high risk of developing the disease within five years.

Both of his sisters, Beckey, 19, and Amanda, 16, have Type I diabetes. His mother’s ailment was diagnosed 3 1/2 years ago as Type II diabetes, a separate form that mainly affects people over 40. His father does not have diabetes.

Tynan and about 200 other study participants will get daily half doses of insulin and yearly insulin treatments in the hospital. They will be monitored throughout for signs of the disease. Those with lower risk will get oral insulin treatments or a placebo, said Richard Jackson, an investigator at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston and one of the project’s architects.

Doctors theorize that the preventive insulin treatment may deter diabetes by protecting crucial cells from attack by the immune system and by “teaching” the body to accept insulin and the cells that make it, Buckingham said.

The experiment is possible because of recent advances in reading body signs that help researchers determine who is likely to contract diabetes, Jackson said.

A small-scale trial at Boston’s Children’s Hospital has produced promising signs that prior treatment may prevent diabetes, Jackson said, but the newest testing is much wider and more reliable.

“This is the trial that really will tell us if it works or not,” Jackson said.

For Tynan, Wednesday’s news brought an end to a year of testing and waiting. And it raised hopes for a new weapon against the foe his mother calls “the D-word.”

“I feel really hopeful it’s going to work,” said Claudia Tynan.

CHOC and other hospitals are seeking more candidates for the clinical trials who have close relatives with diabetes. Information on the trial is available by calling (800) 425-8361.