Scientists discover why type 1 diabetes is worse in children

Scientists have discovered why type 1 diabetes is more severe and aggressive when it develops in young children.

Type 1 is caused by the immune system attacking cells in the pancreas that control blood sugar.

The research team showed that the pancreas is still developing during childhood, especially under the age of seven, making it much more vulnerable to damage.

They say newly developed drugs can delay the disease by giving patients time for the pancreas to mature.

Type 1 diabetes affects around 400,000 people in the UK.

Eight-year-old Gracie, from Merseyside, fell suddenly ill on Halloween in 2018. It started as a mild cold but quickly escalated.

“He went from being a very happy one-year-old, going to nursery school, dancing and singing, to almost dying in less than 48 hours,” says dad Gareth.

“Diagnosis continues to be the worst part of our lives. Suddenly everything we took for granted became 10-20 times harder,” he says.

The Nye family had to adapt quickly; Keeping track of everything Gracie needs to eat or drink, checking her blood sugar levels and administering the hormone insulin, which tells her body to absorb sugar in her blood.

Gracie now has a glucose monitor and an insulin pump, and she’s “bossing off diabetes,” her father says.

“Gracie is a superstar,” he adds.

So why are children diagnosed at such a young age as Gracie? especially those under seven years of ageWhether they had a more aggressive disease than those diagnosed in adolescence or later remained a mystery.

The study, published in the journal Science Advances, shows that this is due to the development of living beta cells in the pancreas.

These are cells that secrete the hormone insulin when blood sugar levels rise after eating.

Researchers at the University of Exeter examined pancreatic samples from 250 donors, allowing them to see how beta cells form normally as people age and in type 1 diabetes.

Early in life, these beta cells were shown to exist in small clusters or as individual cells; However, as we age, these increase in number and mature into larger groups known as Islets of Langerhans.

The study was able to see what happens after the immune system turns against the patient’s own beta cells.

Beta cells in small clusters were selected and destroyed so they never had a chance to mature.

Those in larger islets were still subject to attack, but were more resilient, allowing patients to still produce low levels of insulin, reducing the severity of their disease.

from the University of Exeter. “I think this is a really important finding for type 1 diabetes; it really sheds light on why the disease is more aggressive in children,” Sarah Richardson told the BBC.

He said that the future of children diagnosed with type 1 is now much brighter.

This includes screening healthy children for the disease and the possibility of using new immunotherapy drugs to delay the disease.

The UK has licensed teplizumab, an immunotherapy that can stop the immune system from attacking beta cells and give them time to mature, but it is not available on the NHS.

“As we have new drugs for the treatment of type 1 diabetes in children, we hope that they may prevent or delay the onset of diabetes in these young people,” Dr Richardson said.

The research was part of the Type 1 Diabetes Grand Challenge organized by the Steve Morgan Foundation, Diabetes UK and Breakthrough T1D.

Rachel Connor, Breakthrough T1D’s director of research partnerships, said: “This study gives us a missing piece of the puzzle and explains why type 1 diabetes progresses much more quickly in children than in adults.”

Diabetes UK research and clinical director Dr. Elizabeth Robertson said: “Uncovering why type 1 diabetes is so aggressive in young children opens the door to the development of new immunotherapies aimed at slowing or stopping the immune attack, potentially giving children more valuable years without insulin therapy and one day eliminating the need for it altogether.”