Masayuki Shimoda and Shinichi Matsumoto
Objective: A current goal for the treatment of Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM), an incurable disease, is to prevent deterioration of patients’ Quality Of Life (QOL) by maintaining excellent glycemic control. Health care providers expect that newly developed therapies will help improve QOL, but QOL must be assessed by the patients themselves. Therefore, it is critical to understand patients’ opinions about newly developed therapies. The aim of this study was to investigate patients’ opinions, especially their motivation to accept newly developed therapies.
Method: We analyzed questionnaires (n=85) completed by T1DM patients and family members about four newly developed therapies-Allogeneic Islet Transplantation (AIT), Islet Xenotransplantation (XIT), DNA vaccination, and Induced Pluripotent Stem cell therapy (IPS)-to investigate the factors in their acceptance of these therapies. Results: A total of 56.3% of patients and 74.8% of family members accepted the newly developed therapies. Experience of hypoglycemic events, the main indication for AIT, did not significantly influence acceptance of the newly developed therapies. Desire to be insulin free had significant influence on the acceptance of AIT and IPS (p<0.05, respectively). Conclusion: Achieving insulin-free status is a more important motivator than avoiding hypoglycemia for patients to accept newly developed therapies.