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May 11, 2005
Researchers Uncover Mechanisms Leading to Type I Diabetes
Researchers believe they have made an important breakthrough in understanding the severest form of diabetes, confirming that the disease begins when the body's immune system reacts to the hormone insulin.
Type 1 diabetes usually occurs in childhood, when immune cells called lymphocytes start to attack beta islet cells that make insulin in the pancreas.
The pioneering work by University of Colorado scientist George Eisenbarth and colleagues indicates that insulin is the trigger which unleashes autoimmune lymphocytes. The discovery throws up exciting avenues for potential treatment, perhaps by wiping out the aggressive cells or preventing them from going on the offensive in the first place, he said.
Update:
Forbes has published more:
Insulin, the hormone most closely linked to diabetes, has turned out to be the cause of the inherited form of the blood sugar disease, researchers report.For reasons that remain unclear, in patients with type 1 diabetes the body's immune T-cells react against insulin-producing cells in the pancreas -- effectively shutting them down and triggering disease onset.
After eight long years of painstaking research, scientists believe they've finally pegged insulin as the prime antigen -- immune system target -- responsible for this shutdown.
"In the end, it's a very simple answer. A lot of studies that we do in science tend to be complex, but in this case, we get a break," said lead researcher Dr. David A. Hafler, Breakstone professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. His team's research appears in the May 12 issue of Nature.
Buoyed by the findings, researchers elsewhere are already hard at work testing out insulin as the basis of a possible vaccine against type 1 diabetes
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Posted by Diabetologica at May 11, 2005 12:30 PM