Treatment hope for diabetics

MELBOURNE - Researchers say they have found a gene linked to type 1 diabetes, a disease which starts in childhood and leaves people dependent on insulin for life.

They said their finding shed light on the incurable disease and might offer better ways to treat it than simply injecting insulin.

The gene is not the sole cause of type 1 diabetes but targeting the defect may help prevent its onset.

Grant Morahan of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, who led the study, said progress on diabetes had been hard work but should be a lot faster from now on.

Type 1 diabetes results when the body's defences mistakenly attack the pancreas. Patients lose the cells that produce insulin, which is vital to making use of sugar and fat in food.

Without precise doses of insulin, patients die, or can lose vision and limbs.

Morahan and colleagues knew of work that revealed a gene which helped produced a chemical prompting the immune system to attack the pancreas. Tests on mice that were specially bred to develop diabetes showed that fewer became diabetic when injected with agents that reduced this chemical.

Morahan and colleagues, whose research was published in the journal Nature Genetics, found similar changes when they tested 120 families on a list obtained from the British Diabetes Association.

Morahan said it seemed clear the genetic change was not the sole cause of diabetes.

The disease was complicated genetically. The gene the researchers isolated was common and "is actually doing a good job for most of us."

It led to diabetes only when found in certain combinations with other genes and environmental factors.

Luciano Adorini, of Roche Milano Richerche, an Italian research lab associated with Swiss drug giant Roche, said the research might lead to screening and treatment for type 1 diabetes. It might eventually lead to treatments for other autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.

- REUTERS