So far 35 patients have been treated with sugar treatment.

BBC: Family sugar remedy tested for healing people's wounds

Gordon Weir, a researcher at Harvard-affiliated Joslin Diabetes Center, Boston, believes a strategy using short-term insulin treatment a couple of weeks or months to drive blood sugar back to safer levels, may eventually prove effective and become a treatment strategy.

WSJ: New Strategies for Treating Diabetes

Now it is quite impossible to form a precise estimate of what would have been the increase of the consumption of sugar had it been subjected to the same treatment as coffee.

ECONOMIST: Sugar

This study randomly divided patients into two groups - one received the antibiotic and the other was given a placebo, an inert treatment in the form of a sugar pill, three times a day for seven days.

BBC: Antibiotics 'ineffective for coughs'

The treatment is thought to work because applying sugar to a wound draws the water away, thereby starving the bacteria of what it needs to grow.

BBC: Family sugar remedy tested for healing people's wounds

Study co-ordinator Jens Juul Holst from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, said the results suggested that treatment with the hormone had a significant impact on improving the way the body breaks down sugar.

BBC: Diabetes hormone treatment hope