Almost 29 million cases of diabetes were reported in the United States. Although Type 1 diabetes covers a lesser population from the total of diabetic patients, there is no known cure for the metabolic condition.
According to Diabetes And Environment, in the case of Type 1 Diabetes, the beta cells does not produce enough insulin because of the death of beta cells. Beta cells secrete insulin which is essential in human metabolism. Insulin converts sugar to energy, without insulin the blood sugar level increases causing diabetes.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease wherein the body's immune system attacks and kills its own beta cells. Inflammation makes the beta cells as targets of the T cell to further their death. A new research, however, shows that some people continue to produce insulin for many years and beta cell mass was found to maintain its physiologic function before the diagnosis and gradually declines rapidly just right after the diagnosis.
As reported by Medical News Today, scientists were able to investigate the changes in beta cells during the immune attack by utilizing both mouse model and human cell culture. The new research was headed by Dr. Kevan Herold a professor of immunobiology at Yale University together with The Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.
Herold and the whole team were able to discover the mechanism on how the beta cells survive the immune attack. They were able to identify a subpopulation of beta cells in non-obese diabetic mice that are 9-week old. The new subpopulations are from normal beta cells. The new cells possess lower granularity and develop together with the progression of Type 1 diabetes.
During the progression of the disease, the population of the cells divides into two. The one subpopulation is killed by the body's immune system while the other subpopulation might possess features that make it less susceptible to autoimmune killing.
The subpopulation of the beta cells that is not killed by the immune system has the ability to revert the progression enabling them to survive and reproduce despite the immune attack. These discovery opened new doors to Herold and his whole team to create a clinical trial using drugs to properly discover the cure to type 1 diabetes.
