Health and medicine blog.

Juvenile Diabetes - Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks the insulin producing pancreatic beta cells. The gradual loss of beta cells results in life-long dependence on exogenous insulin. At the moment, the earliest identifiable process in the pathogenesis of type 1 diabetic has been the development of autoimmunity to pancreatic beta cells in the measurable form of islet auto-antibodies.

Although the autoimmunity usually precedes the clinical disease by months to years, its occurrence may already be too late for therapeutic approaches aimed at preventing progression to overt diabetes. The initiators of the autoimmune response have remained unknown and the mechanisms supporting progression towards beta cell failure have been poorly understood, making discovery of effective prevention a challeng.

In 1994, an ongoing birth cohort study (DIPP, the Type 1 Diabetes Prediction and Prevention study) was launched in Finland, supported by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International. Over a period of 14 years, more than 130,000 newborn infants have been screened for genetic risk and over 8000 at-risk children are being regularly followed.

The investigators found that the individuals who developed diabetes had reduced serum levels of succinic acid and phosphatidylcholine at birth, reduced levels of triglycerides and antioxidant ether phospholipids throughout the follow-up and increased levels of proinflammatory lysophosphatidylcholines several months prior to autoimmunity to pancreatic beta cells. The metabolic profile was partially normalized following the autoimmune response, suggesting autoimmunity may be a relatively late physiological response to the early metabolic disturbances. The observed lipid changes were not attributable to HLA-associated genetic risk.

Metabolic profiling at early age may therefore aid in determining the risk of type 1 diabetes. The reported findings imply that metabolic or immunomodulatory interventions during the pre-autoimmune period may be used as a new potential strategy for prevention of type 1 diabetes.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 2nd, 2009 at 5:27 pm and is filed under Diabetes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.