Monitoring T Cells Might Allow Type 1 Diabetes Prevention: Study
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Scripps Scientists have discovered that analysing a certain type of immune cell in the blood can help identify people at risk of developing type 1 diabetes, a fatal autoimmune illness. If the new approach is verified in future research, it might be used to select potential people for treatment that stops the autoimmune process, making type 1 diabetes a preventable condition.
In the study, which appeared in Science Translational Medicine on July 5, 2023, the researchers isolated T cells (a type of immune cell) from mouse and human blood samples. By analyzing the T cells that can cause type 1 diabetes, they were able to distinguish the at-risk patients who had active autoimmunity from those who had no significant autoimmunity—with 100% accuracy in a small sample. “These findings represent a big step forward because they offer the possibility of catching this autoimmune process while there is still time to prevent or greatly delay diabetes,” says study senior author Luc