Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks its own cells.
This affects the so-called beta cells of the pancreas, causing them to lose the ability to produce the hormone insulin. At first the cells can still produce some insulin, but eventually the body can no longer produce the hormone at all and the patient becomes dependent on extra insulin for the rest of his life.
Insulin works like a kind of key, signaling cells in the muscles, fat tissue and the liver to absorb sugars from the blood. The hormone plays an important role in lowering blood sugar levels and converting sugar into energy.
However, it is not known what causes the immune system to fight pancreatic cells in patients with type 1 diabetes.
Type 1 diabetes is a genetic condition, while type 2 is a lifestyle disease that can be prevented in most people with a healthy diet and exercise.
Virus contributes to the development of diabetes
In the new researchwhich was recently published in the journal Nature Medicine, Norwegian scientists administered the antiviral drugs pleconaril and ribavirin for six months to 48 children between the ages of six and 16 who had recently been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
The researchers suspected that viral infections contribute to the damage to the insulin factory of the pancreas, because it has previously been shown that patients with type 1 diabetes have a chronic viral disease in the pancreas.
Another group of children of the same age received an inactive placebo and served as a control group.
After a year, the researchers found that the group given the antiviral drugs had “significantly higher” levels of self-produced insulin than participants in the control group. According to the study, this means that the antiviral medication may be able to slow the rate of disease development.
The scientists now hope that by combining the medication with anti-inflammatories and agents that stimulate the pancreas, they can develop a drug to prevent the disease altogether.
But there is still a long way to go. This is what one of the researchers says, professor and physician Jesper Johannesen from the Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen and the children and adolescents department of Herlev Hospital in Denmark.
‘We hope that we will get closer in the coming years. Clearly our discovery needs to be confirmed by others,” he counters Ritzau.
The study was conducted in collaboration with the pediatric clinic of the University Hospital in Oslo and the University of Oslo in Norway.
2023-10-11 15:15:39
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