UK researchers have reported that a common virus may trigger many cases of type 1 diabetes.
The study published in Diabetologia, was conducted by Dr Alan Foulis and colleagues from the Peninsula Medical School in Exeter and the University of Brighton. It was funded by Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF).
It involved looking for enteroviruses, which are a common group of viruses, in tissue samples routinely taken during autopsy in 72 children with type 1 diabetes and comparing them with samples from 50 children without the condition.
Signs of enteroviruses were found in pancreatic tissue from 60 percent of the children with type 1 diabetes, but in hardly any children without the condition. The enteroviruses were specifically found in the insulin-producing beta cells.
The study also found that 40 percent of adults with type 2 diabetes had signs of the enterovirus in their beta cells.
Dr Alan Foulis’s study was made possible by the collection of tissue samples from children with type 1 diabetes over the course of 25 years made by a Glasgow pathologist.
Type 1 diabetes is known to be an auto-immune condition in which beta cells in the pancreas are destroyed by the body. Genetics are known to play a part in increasing the risk of a person’s likelihood of developing diabetes along with other factors. The idea of a virus that causes diabetes has been examined by scientists before.
The researchers suggest that in children with a genetic predisposition to type 1 diabetes, an enterovirus can trigger this immune reaction that is the start of the condition. With type 2 diabetes, linked to the rise in obesity, they think that the virus may affect the ability of the cells to make insulin which is enough to start the condition.
Overall, the findings of this new study suggest that a vaccination given in childhood may be possible to develop in the future to prevent enteroviruses, which affect the beta cells in the pancreas causing both types of diabetes.
There are however, over 100 types of enteroviruses, and more research is needed to discover which ones may be associated with the development of diabetes before vaccines can be developed. There is a lot more work still to be done.