If this is true, all I can say as "wow" and "I'll be back after I go out and inhale a bagful of pixie stix". I'll believe it a little more once I see it from a source other than the AFP.

Stem cell treatment reverses diabetes: Argentine researchers

Millions of diabetics worldwide could put insulin injections behind them if a stem cell treatment that Argentine physicians have successfully used to reverse the disease confirms promising early results.

The treatment, in which stem cells are injected into the pancreas, does not involve risks of rejection, requires no prolonged inpatient treatment, and any physician trained in and skilled with catheterization could perform it, cardiologist Roberto Fernandez Vina told AFP.

Fernandez Vina leads the team that successfully carried out the first implant of its kind January 3 on an insulin-dependent diabetic patient at San Nicolas Hospital in the town of San Nicolas, north of Buenos Aires.

The 42-year-old man, who had been insulin dependent since the age of 25, so far has seen his glucose levels return to normal with no need for medication.

The treatment involves extracting stem cells from the ilium, a bone in the hip, and after manipulating them in the laboratory, injecting them into the pancreas using a special catheter introduced through the femoral artery, which provides a direct route to the "tail" of the pancreas.