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Scientists in the United States believe they have come up with a way to reverse type-one diabetes - ending a daily injection regime for sufferers.
Diabetes affects the lives of more than 100,000 New Zealanders, including Sue Pearson whose life depends on injecting insulin into her body five times a day.
Pearson has lived with type one diabetes for 20 years - her body can't produce the hormone insulin which controls the amount of sugar in her blood.
"It's something that I live with 365 days of the year, 24 hours a day. I never have a day off."
In New Zealand, type one diabetes affects 10,000 people and can strike at any time. Currently 105,000 people have type two, which is diet controlled, but this group is expected to rise significantly in the next decade.
The development in America could end the injections forever.
Researchers in Boston say they have stopped, and even reversed, type one diabetes in mice by injecting them with spleen cells from healthy animals.
Denise Faust from Massachusetts General Hospital says if the effect could be translated to humans it might mean that they could become insulin free some time in the future.
Diabetes researchers in New Zealand say the discovery could be a breakthrough.
Garth Cooper from Auckland University says it looks like very fundamental biology.
"I'm very excited," he says.
But diabetes sufferers have learned to be patient after getting excited about reported breakthroughs which have not materialised.
"There is often a lot of hype about things that are going to happen but they never happen," says Pearson.
The Boston scientists now hope to apply the research to blood samples from human diabetes sufferers before proceeding to full clinical trials.
