Bacteria protect against diabetes
Добавлено: 23.09.2008, 9:21
Friendly bacteria in the gut may protect against insulin-dependent diabetes, a study suggests.
In tests on mice, the bugs appeared to stop the rogue immune response that triggers the disease.
Type 1 diabetes is caused by an autoimmune response which destroys insulin-producing islet cells in the pancreas.
About 300,000 people in the UK suffer from the disease. The condition often develops in childhood and has to be controlled with daily insulin jabs.
Type 2 diabetes, the much more common form of the disease linked to obesity and lifestyle, affects almost two million Britons.
Scientists in the US studied genetically engineered diabetic mice whose immune systems lacked a key protein that allowed them to respond to bacteria.
Raised in a completely germ-free environment, 80% of the mice developed severe type 1 diabetes.
When they were given back a cocktail of the bacterial "flora" normally found in the mammalian gut, only around a third of the animals became ill.
The study showed that harmless bacteria could prevent type 1 diabetes even when there is a predisposition to the disease.
It also demonstrated the role played by the immune system protein MyD88 in type 1 diabetes.
In tests on mice, the bugs appeared to stop the rogue immune response that triggers the disease.
Type 1 diabetes is caused by an autoimmune response which destroys insulin-producing islet cells in the pancreas.
About 300,000 people in the UK suffer from the disease. The condition often develops in childhood and has to be controlled with daily insulin jabs.
Type 2 diabetes, the much more common form of the disease linked to obesity and lifestyle, affects almost two million Britons.
Scientists in the US studied genetically engineered diabetic mice whose immune systems lacked a key protein that allowed them to respond to bacteria.
Raised in a completely germ-free environment, 80% of the mice developed severe type 1 diabetes.
When they were given back a cocktail of the bacterial "flora" normally found in the mammalian gut, only around a third of the animals became ill.
The study showed that harmless bacteria could prevent type 1 diabetes even when there is a predisposition to the disease.
It also demonstrated the role played by the immune system protein MyD88 in type 1 diabetes.