Islet transplantation from a nationally funded UK centre reaches socially deprived groups and improves metabolic outcomes

Acknowledgements We thank the transplant nurses involved with the Scottish Islet Transplant Programme (T. McGilvray, J. Davidson, M. Phillips and C. Jansen) for help with participant assessment. We thank the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Services including the Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics Team for HLA typing and antibody screening, and the Tissue and Cells Team (A. Timpson, L. Fraser, L. Irvine and P. Henry) for islet isolation and product release testing. We acknowledge the Departments of Transplantation, Diabetes and Interventional Radiology at NHS Lothian for all aspects of patient care and the organ procurement programme. We thank J. Shaw and A. Brooks from the Department of Regenerative Medicine for Diabetes at the University of Newcastle for advice regarding CGMS. C-peptide assays were performed by the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre, Core Biochemical Assay Laboratory. Funding: The Scottish Islet Transplant Programme is funded by the National Services Division. This research was funded by Diabetes UK (Biomedical and Psychosocial Outcomes of Islet Transplantation; Grant no. BDA 06/0003362), Diabetes Research and Wellness Foundation, Diabetes Foundation, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the Royal Infirmary Diabetes Treatment Trust Fund. Open Access: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.Peer reviewedPublisher PD