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A common blood pressure drug could be the key to reversing diabetes, researchers have said.

Called verapamil, it is widely diagnosed to treat blood pressure, irregular heartbeat and migraines.

Researchers were stunned to find that in mice, it completely reversed the effects of the disease.

he trial, known as 'the repurposing of verapamil as a beta cell survival therapy in type 1 diabetes,' is scheduled to begin early next year. Type 1 diabetes is usually diagnosed in children and young adults, and was previously known as juvenile diabetes.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham has now been given a three-year, $2.1 million grant to begin human trials of the drug.

'We have previously shown that verapamil can prevent diabetes and even reverse the disease in mouse models and reduce TXNIP in human islet beta cells, suggesting that it may have beneficial effects in humans as well,' said Anath Shalev,of UAB's Comprehensive Diabetes Center, who is leading the trial.

The trial, known as 'the repurposing of verapamil as a beta cell survival therapy in type 1 diabetes,' is scheduled to begin early next year and has come to fruition after more than a decade of research efforts in UAB's Comprehensive Diabetes Center.

Type 1 diabetes is usually diagnosed in children and young adults, and was previously known as juvenile diabetes. 

Only 5% of people with diabetes have this form of the disease, when the body does not produce insulin.

The trial will test an approach different from any current diabetes treatment by focusing on promoting specialized cells in the pancreas called beta cells, which produce insulin the body needs to control blood sugar. 

UAB scientists have proved through years of research that high blood sugar causes the body to overproduce a protein called TXNIP, which is increased within the beta cells in response to diabetes, but had never previously been known to be important in beta cell biology. 

Too much TXNIP in the pancreatic beta cells leads to their deaths and thwarts the body's efforts to produce insulin, thereby contributing to the progression of diabetes.

But UAB scientists have also uncovered that the drug verapamil, which is widely used to treat high blood pressure, irregular heartbeat and migraine headaches, can lower TXNIP levels in these beta cells — to the point that, when mouse models with established diabetes and blood sugars above 300 milligrams per deciliter were treated with verapamil, the disease was eradicated.

'That is a proof-of-concept that, by lowering TXNIP, even in the context of the worst diabetes, we have beneficial effects. 

'And all of this addresses the main underlying cause of the disease — beta cell loss. 

'Our current approach attempts to target this loss by promoting the patient's own beta cell mass and insulin production. 

'There is currently no treatment available that targets diabetes in this way.'

UAB researchers will begin conducting a potentially groundbreaking clinical trial in 2015 to see if it can do the same in humans.

Researchers have known for some time that beta cells are critical in type 1 and type 2 diabetes. The cells are gradually lost in both types of the disease due to programmed cell death, but the exact triggers for the deaths were previously unknown. 

Somewhat surprisingly, it was also noted that, after years — decades, even — of living with type 1 diabetes, where beta cells were thought to be completely destroyed early on by the autoimmune process, patients still had a measurable amount of beta cell function; it just was not enough to maintain a normal blood sugar.