Lurie Children's offers breakthrough treatment for kids newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes

For years, children newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes had to take insulin and manage their blood sugars. They had no other options, but now they do. This is quite a breakthrough. Lurie Children's is offering a new type of treatment for children. It is called Z-Zelde or Z-Zield. It acts directly on the disease process by helping preserve the remaining insulin production. Nine-year-old Carson was diagnosed with stage 2 type 1 diabetes in June. She was the first patient eligible for this new treatment. She joins us now along with her mom, Andrea Hendricks and pediatric endocrinologist, Dr. Laura Levin. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having us. Yeah. So Dr. Levin, I want to start with you. Tell us about this breakthrough treatment. So type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease and the immune system is attacking your insulin making cells in the pancreas. If we don't have insulin in our body, it causes the blood sugars to go too high. So that can lead to different symptoms and not feeling well such as excessive thirst, drinking, peeing all the time and weight loss. Tzield right now is a new medication that's available for certain patients and it works completely different than insulin. It attempts to stop the immune system from attacking the pancreas and allows the pancreas to keep making insulin for a longer period of time. Tzield is a very, very exciting new drug because it's a new approach to type one diabetes. It's an opportunity to change the course of the disease. But I want to be clear, Tzield is not a cure, but it is a disease-modifying therapy that kind of targets the immune system. Understood. Dr. Levin, thanks for explaining that. Andrea, I want to bring you and Carson into the fold here because I'm sure this has made a difference in your child's life. Carson, maybe start with you. How have you felt since you've been taking this drug? I felt pretty good and awesome. It was kind of like a good experience to experience this and I thought like diabetes like was like I wasn't like gonna like do everything like I used to be doing. Understood. Andrea, speak to that. What has been the difference maker here and is this something that you're taking every day? Is this once a week? How does that process work? So, no, we were introduced to it. She was diagnosed June 17th. That Wednesday was actually approved that Friday. So, it was like, to me, everything was just God's timing. So, it was a 12-day infusion process, and it literally happened, like, right before she was about to start school. And. And that beginning process, you know, you do have side effects. We were understood. You know, Dr. Levin made sure we understood all of the, you know, being aware of all the symptoms that could happen, that it wasn't going to be a cure. But she did have a chance to get her normalcy back. Doctor, who's eligible to take this medication? So right now, patients who are eligible are eight years old and older for type 1, stage 3 diabetes. The reason I mention that is because Tzield can also be approved for something called stage 2 diabetes, which is before you actually have an A1C of greater than 6.5. But Carson qualified because she was greater than eight years old. Dr. Levin, I want to go back to something here. So you made it clear this is not a cure and studies show it can delay, though, symptomatic diabetes. How long does this drug work for? Is this something that you have to keep repeatedly getting in your system? So right now it's two infusions for like Carson at least six months apart and like her mom said it's a 12-day infusion. So it's given 12 days and then they Carson is on insulin right now and then in six to 12 months we'll give her another infusion. Andra, talk a little bit about your social media presence because I get the understanding that you don't want other families to feel like they're alone in this fight against type 1 diabetes. So tell us what you and your family have been doing. That was like the scariest time for us. That's okay. Go ahead because we're moms, so we understand. Oh my goodness, we do. I felt helpless because I just saw my baby screaming for water. And so I think being in a hospital, it was hard trying to, like, we had a lot of information, right? We have parents, we have social media outlets, we have friends, family for us to understand. It was very hard trying to get her to understand exactly what was happening to her body, why this was happening, why she needed insulin, what her life was going to look like. So we came up with Kari's Care, a platform for children to have a voice so that they are able to also see, like, I can still do the same thing I did before. She is truly a diabetic princess. There's other diabetic princesses and princes out there where, you know, they have resources that we, you know, didn't know about at the time. So to kind of give them the ease of the process if they do decide to do Tzield or just anything with being a family of type 1 diabetes. Well, we're happy that you're in this fight for other families too. Doctor, I wanna go back to you because one of the major issues we hear when it comes to medical diagnosis or anything with medicine now is access. Is this something that insurance will cover? And talk about the access, how accessible this is to others. So what I want to say is that, you know, I know that a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes is very scary and overwhelming, like Carson's mom just kind of illustrated. It's manageable with insulin, and there have been many advances in technology making this disease easier, but it's still a fight every day, and patients have to be continuously watching their blood sugar and monitoring them. I want families to know that this treatment is available and it's changing the landscape of diabetes. We have the ability to offer this treatment through our diabetes program at Lurie Children's and families can call and make an appointment if your child has been recently diagnosed because again they have to be within that eight weeks of diagnosis and we can set up an appointment to meet with an endocrinologist and learn more. Right now, insurance is covering most patients. We are having some obstacles, but if patients qualify, it should be covered fairly. Literally. Good. Good. Doctor, before we let you go, we don't have a lot of time left, but talk a little bit about side effects. So side effects of Tzield, in the beginning of the infusion, Carson did experience some of these side effects. You can feel a little bit of nausea, some vomiting, headaches, some weakness, which Carson definitely illustrated. Thank you. You can develop a fever. You will feel sick during the first couple days of the infusion, for sure. Understood. Before we let you go, because I can't leave out the other little one. So we got Andra, we got Carson. Who else is there? And are they twins, mom? Yes, they're identical twins. This is my sister, Brooklyn. So she's been our cheerleader through this entire process. All right, Brooklyn, we couldn't leave you out of the fold here. Good to see you too. Thank all of you so much for talking about this. And hopefully, by speaking up about this, you've changed some other families' lives. We appreciate every single one of you. And good luck to you, Carson. Thank you. Thank you.