Let us be reminded that type 1 diabetes (formerly called juvenile diabetes) is an autoimmune disease by which the body's immune system mistakenly targets the pancreas, killing the cells (pancreatic beta cells) that make insulin.

Once the pancreatic beta cells are compromised, there won't be enough insulin in the body to control blood sugar levels. That's why those with type 1 diabetes need external source of insulin to manage their condition.

There are antibodies in the human blood (three, previously identified) that are used as measures to detect predisposition (or risk level) to type 1 diabetes.




The recent identification of the fourth antibody (ZnT8) will help accurately predict one's predisposition to type 1 diabetes -actually increasing the accuracy to 96 percent.

This fourth antibody was recently discovered by researchers at the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes and University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center's School of Medicine with the use of microarray analysis.

According to John Hutton, PhD, research director at the Barbara Davis Center and senior author of the paper:

"This is incredibly exciting for us since this new target is the first to be discovered in 10 years. ZnT8 shows great value as a diagnostic tool and we believe testing for it will very quickly become routine in all of the ongoing clinical research studies.

For example, this fourth autoantigen will find immediate use in identifying individuals with a family history of diabetes or a genetic predisposition to the disease for recruitment into clinical trials aimed at preventing diabetes.
Ultimately, we'd like to be able to prevent diabetes from occurring in the first place. It could be possible by catching it in the very early stages and then manipulating the immune system.

ZnT8 itself might be part of that therapy since it has been shown in diabetes-prone mice that administering antigen as a vaccine can prevent disease, a similar approach that is currently used to counter allergies. We also hope that the same genomics-based approach will be applicable to other autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis and lupus."

Of course, prevention is always a lot better than the treatment, especially if there is no known cure yet. At least with use of markers, like the four antibodies, those at highest risk of type 1 diabetes, better to "prep" them as early as possible with prevention measures.

Findings of the above study will be published in the Oct. 23 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) - appearing online this week.

Find more details from University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center.