Diabetes causes tracked
Monday January 16th, 2012
British researchers say they have made progress in seeking to understand the causes of early diabetes.
So-called
type 1 diabetes is caused by the destruction of the body's insulin producing
cells in the pancreas.
This is caused by the victim's own immune system - and now researchers at Cardiff Medical School, Wales, have carried out a detailed study of how this happens.
The researchers say they have secured the "first ever glimpse" of how killer T cells attack the insulin producing organ.
They say the rogue cells use an "abnormal" mode of binding to recognise the insulin cells - and this may help them evade the body's mechanism for identifying cells of this kind.
The findings were reported last night in the journal Nature Immunology.
Researcher Professor Andy Sewell said: "Our findings show how killer T-cells might play an important role in autoimmune diseases like diabetes and we’ve secured the first ever glimpse of the mechanism by which killer T-cells can attack our own body cells to cause disease."
A fellow researcher Professor Mark Peakman, from King's College London, said: "This first sight of how killer T-cells make contact with the cells that make insulin is very enlightening, and increases our understanding of how Type 1 diabetes may arise.
“This knowledge will be used in the future to help us predict who might get the disease and also to develop new approaches to prevent it. Our aim is to catch the disease early before too many insulin-producing cells have been damaged.”
Structural basis of human b-cell killing by preproinsulin-specific CD8+ T-cells in type 1 diabetes. Nature Immunology January 15 2012
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