July 17, 2007
Type 1 Diabetes Causing Gene Identified
This was a news item that I got from the Times of India Newspaper print edition, also published in their website. It gives us hope on a cure for Type 1 Diabetes.
In a discovery that could help prevent children from becoming diabetic, scientists have found a gene that increases a child's risk for type 1 diabetes.
In the breakthrough, scientists have found that the gene KIAA0350 on chromosome 16 triggers the immune system cells to attack the pancreas. It is the loss of insulin-producing islet cells in the pancreas that causes type 1 or juvenile diabetes. The team from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and McGill University in Montreal have announced their findings in the July 15 issue of the journal Nature.
During the study, investigators examined the genomes of 1,046 children with type 1 diabetes from paediatric diabetes clinics in Philadelphia and four Canadian cities. The researchers then compared the genomes of 563 patients with type 1 diabetes with those of 1,146 matched control subjects.
The researchers confirmed the four previously identified genes contributing to type 1 diabetes, but also stumbled upon a new type 1 diabetes variation on chromosome 16, occupied by the gene KIAA0350.
Hakon Hakonarson, director of the Centre for Applied Genomics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said, "The role of KIAA0350 needs to be investigated. However, a special cell type called a natural killer (NK) cell expresses this gene abundantly. Our hypothesis is that a special mutation in KIAA0350 may influence the sugar binding of the protein and trigger an autoimmune response that activates these NK cells in such a way that they attack and destroy the islet cells in the pancreas, resulting in type 1 diabetes."
"A particular version of the gene protects against this inappropriate autoimmune response, while a different version of the gene makes it more likely to happen," he added. According to Dr Anoop Mishra from Fortis, a complicated disease like diabetes will have atleast 8-10 genes that influence various aspects of the disease. While some will trigger diabetes early, others will cause complications early or lead to higher Blood Pressure in some patients. Some genes will also control all aspects of the disease.
This research adds a new gene to the four genes previously discovered for type 1 diabetes, in which the immune system destroys insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas and makes patients dependent on frequent insulin injections to keep the body's blood sugar under control.
Constantin Polychronakos, director of Paediatric Endocrinology at McGill University, said that better knowledge of genes that predispose to type 1 diabetes may later enable physicians to screen newborns to predict those at high risk for the disease. "If we know the gene pathways that give rise to type 1 diabetes, we hope to intervene early in life with targeted drugs or cell therapies to prevent the disease from developing," said Polychronakos.
It is an exceptionally good news for all those people suffering silently from Type 1 Diabetes. It is also quite reassuring that medical scientists have considered it extremely important and urgent to find a cure for both Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes. All of us can hope that a remedy should be commercially available in the very near future.
Source:
This information was compiled from the website of The Times Of India newspaper, TimeOfIndia.com, an India Times Group company.
http://www.completediabetesinformation.com/2007/07/type-1-diabetes-causing-gene-identified/
