Intrahepatic human islet transplantation at the University of Pittsburgh: results in 25 consecutive cases.

I N PATIENTS with type I diabetes. insulin production by pancreatic islets declines until severnl years after onset, and the majority have no demonstrable endogenous insulin secretion due to relentless autoimmune destruction of insulin-producing B cells. Before 1990, the lack of any successful islet cell transplants in humans was frustrating. With new developments in the techniques used to isolate and purify islets from the human pancreas, short and prolonged insulin independence has been reported following human islet transplantation in man. We report herein our initial experience in human islet alloand autotransplantation in 25 patients.