French and German researchers have been successful in treating type 1 diabetic mice with a vaccine.

Type 1 diabetes - the juvenile or insulin-dependent diabetes - where in sufferers have already developed the condition since childhood - is an autoimmune disease.

Autoimmune diseases develop when the immune system can no longer distinguish between "non-self" and "self" and attacks the body's own structures as is the case in type 1 diabetes.

In this severe metabolic disorder, misguided T cells of the immune system destroy the cells of the pancreas that produce insulin, a hormone essential for life.

That's why the vaccine used in this particular study has been designed to contain the structures that the immune system mistakenly attacks in type 1 diabetes.

As explained by Drs. Falk and Rötzschke of Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC), who conducted the research:

...the protective effect of the immunization is due to the activation of the suppressor cells of the immune system. Suppressor cells block T cells.

However, suppressor cells raised against the body's structures selectively inhibit only those T cells that attack the body's own tissue. T cells that attack foreign structures such as viruses or bacteria remain unaffected by these suppressor cells.

The immune system is thus again able to recognize the body's own structures as "self" and tolerate them.

In short, the vaccine acts as some kind of decoy, so that immune system's T cells will not attack the cells in our pancreas that produces insulin -benefiting the type 1 diabetes patient.

Remember though that the vaccine was administered in mice, might still take a long while before human testing but promising nonetheless.

Find more details from the full report.

[Photo Credit: Science Museum]