South Korean researchers may have found a way to treat diabetes using a specific kind of grass.
They say their research has shown positive results in animal testing... and they are keen to see whether it has a similar effect on people.
Cho Sung-min reports.
One out of ten people in Korea is diagnosed with diabetes.
The disease is currently incurable, but treatable and highly preventable, as those who are living with diabetes need to go through a lifetime of medicine including insulin injections.
However, local researchers may have found a possible answer.
They extracted a substance called CGE from a specific type of grass called centipede grass.
The team says nearly four grams of CGE could be extracted from one-hundred grams of grass.
But they found a new way to make the yield seven times bigger,...by exposing the grass to radiation.
Experiments conducted on animals proved that CGE helps treat both type 1 and 2 diabetes. The tests in fact have open a wide range of possibilities of abolishing injections from diabetes treatments.
"CGE doesn't need to be injected. Using the substance can reduce many side effects that existing medicines to treat diabetes have."
The team is currently working on ways to further develop the substance into commercially available medicine.
Cho Sung-min, Arirang News.
