Breakthrough in understanding of the illness raises hopes of better treatments in the future
Scientists have made a breakthrough in their understanding of diabetes after discovering that babies can…
Scientists have made a breakthrough in their understanding of diabetes after discovering that babies can contract type 1 diabetes in the first six months of their lives.
Previously, the very rare cases of diabetes that have been diagnosed in babies were thought to be of a distinct kind only found in infants, which is known as neonatal diabetes and requires a different treatment to the type 1 version of the disease.
Knowing that some babies can, in fact, get type 1 diabetes means that they can get the correct treatment which, in some cases, could save their lives.
Furthermore, studying these kind of extreme, fast developing cases of type 1 diabetes could prove invaluable to researchers, teaching them more about how it develops in older people and paving the way for better treatments.
Immune system attack
That’s because, whereas neonatal diabetes is caused by a single genetic mutation affecting insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, type 1 diabetes is caused when the same cells are destroyed by an immune system attack – and understanding what causes those attacks could lead to new drugs.
“These important findings rewrite our understanding of when the condition can strike and when the immune system can start to go wrong,” said Elizabeth Robertson, director of research at Diabetes UK, which part funded this research and is financing follow-on work.
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="84" width="84" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
Dr Richard Oram, of the University of Exeter, said: “The next phases of this work, where we study the immune system in more detail, will hopefully help explain how it is possible for type 1 diabetes to develop so early and whether these insights could open up new ways to prevent or treat the condition in the future.”
Outside expert reaction
Professor Lucy Walker, an expert on diabetes who was not involved in the study, added:
“These findings are important since they show that type 1 diabetes can develop very early in life. The immune system is different in newborns than in adults, so understanding how autoimmunity develops at such an early age may point to new treatments.”
Diabetes in children
It is very rare for a baby to develop diabetes, which affects about 1 in 100,000 babies.
About 5 per cent of cases in babies are thought to be type 1 diabetes.
The research is published in the journal Diabetologia and also involved scientists from King’s College London and the Pacific Northwest Research Institute in Seattle.
In about half of those with neonatal diabetes, the condition is lifelong and is called permanent neonatal diabetes mellitus (PNDM). In the rest, the condition is transient, or temporary, and disappears during infancy but can reappear later in life.
