With only half a year of life, babies that will later develop type 1 diabetes have in their blood some defense cells that are already armed to attack the pancreas and stop insulin production.These cells, a special type of lymphocytes, are latent: they have not activated or ordered to manufacture antibodies.But there they are and seem to anticipate the disease.
This is explained by the authors of a study published today by the magazine Science Translational Medicine, which detected the cells by analyzing blood samples of 28 children with a greater genetic predisposition to family inheritance disease.These children were followed since birth in the framework of another study called Babydiet.
When analyzing the data, the researchers, an international team of scientists led from the University of Dresden (Germany), concluded that, of the 16 children who ended up developing type 1 diabetes, half had in the blood those latent lymphocytes, which were alreadypresent at six months of life, or even before.
"This suggests that your immune system is prepared to go against pancreas cells that produce very, very early insulin," Big Vang explains by email the main author of the study, Professor Ezio Bonifacio.
Its immune system is prepared to go against pancreas cells that produce very, very early insulin. ”Ezio Bonifacio.Main author of the study.
The presence and special characteristics of these latent lymphocytes can help better understand how type 1 diabetes appearan increase in thirst to a slow scar of the wounds.
“The study brings a new important fact about the development of diabetes.There is a stage in which there are no symptoms and of which we know almost nothing, ”says Dr. Marta Vives-Pi, head of the Diabetes Impermology Immunology Group of the Institut Germans Trias I Pujol, who has not participated in the study.
"It is relevant that the results are in humans, although to validate the data it would be necessaryA vaccine to cure the disease.
The presence and special characteristics of these lymphocytes can help better understand how type 1 diabetes appears
Bonifacio ratifies it and explains that, in addition, it will be necessary to investigate whether the discovered lymphocytes anticipate only the attack against the pancreas cells that manufacture insulin, called beta, or are also armed against other cells.
Understand what happens from the beginning
The finding is a new step to understand what happens long before the patients are diagnosed when detecting antibodies against the beta cells of the pancreas.
According to the researchers, when the antibodies are detected, lymphocytes have ceased to be latent to be active.But why before, even a few months after life, these defense cells in the latent state are already prepared to fight the pancreas?The authors suggest that it may be due to a genetic predisposition but also to external causes.
Virus infections before or after birth can predispose these cells to arm themselves against diabetes
In this sense, they point out that certain virus infections before or after birth can predispose latent cells to arm themselves against diabetes.“The work highlights the importance of the perinatal stage in type 1 diabetes and surely efforts to identify factors will have to identifyEnvironmental during this stage, ”says Vives-Pi.
In fact, the cases of this disease are increasing and this is one of the reasons why it can be related to external causes, beyond a genetic predisposition.
Special genetic characteristics
Of course, if the study determined that these latent lymphocytes are special was due to their genetic characteristics.When one hundreds of blood defense cells of the 28 children individually analyzed, the authors saw that those who were only in those who developed diabetes had in common that they turned on or off the same genes of their DNA.
The found cells are distinguished from similar ones by turning on or off specific genes
Therefore, Bonifacio does not rule out that, in the long term, it is possible to precede early the development of the disease based on these characteristics: "It may be possible to look at six months which children with genetic susceptibility will probably develop type 1 diabetes,"He explains, although he warns that for this more studies are needed that may take years.The researcher does not close the door to diagnose early children without relatives affected by the disease.
Next step, eliminate or change latent cells
The main author of the work advances that his group will now focus on the prevention of the disease from the finding.It is, he explains, "finding a path to eliminate or change these divergent cells," and adds that they will try to manage children at high risk of having type 1 diabetes a treatment with oral insulin.
