Study at UCD identifies crucial islet target in type 1 diabetes
Researchers at the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes at the University of Colorado Denver have identified a crucial
target of islet cells in the pancreas that white blood cells attack, leading
to Type 1 diabetes.
The study, led by George Eisenbarth, MD, PhD, executive director of the Barbara
Davis Center, was published in the May 12 edition of Nature.
The UCD study
is likely to transform the study of diabetes autoimmunity and also has implications
for other autoimmune diseases and illnesses, suggesting that autoimmune diseases
may not be as complex as once thought.
Diabetes is the fifth-deadliest disease in the United States and currently
affects 18.2 million people, or 6.3 percent of the population. Type 1 diabetes
is characterized by the specific destruction of cells within the pancreas
that produce insulin. Researchers have long thought that multiple actual
and potential targets exist and the UCD study indicates that for the intensively
studied model of childhood diabetes, the target might be a small piece of
insulin itself, a peptide termed B:9-23.
“One hypothesis to account for diabetes was the possibility of crucial
targets of islet cells in the pancreas and, if there was a single or primary
target, altering the attack on that target could and should prevent diabetes,” Dr.
Eisenbarth said. “This study demonstrates there is a crucial target and
with the existence of primary targets, genetic techniques to change a single
target can prevent a complex autoimmune disease, such as type 1 diabetes.”
This information, combined with a related study in Nature this month from researchers
at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, points to the central role of insulin
as a target and indicates the importance of the insulin gene for genetic susceptibility
to diabetes. The study there identified a piece of insulin as a major target
of white blood cells in cloned T-cells of pancreatic lymph nodes of patients
with type 1 diabetes.
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