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Vaccine May Prevent Onset Of Type 1 Diabetes
Vaccine May Prevent Onset Of Type 1 Diabetes -- Posted by Gumbo on 12-24-04 06:12
Vaccine May Prevent Onset Of Type 1 Diabetes
Melbourne researchers have developed a nasal insulin vaccine that could
prevent the onset of disease in high-risk children.
Researchers at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research say
the vaccine involves those at risk of the disease taking insulin through a
nasal spray.
Professor Len Harrison, said it would eventually be possible to screen
babies at birth, then determine at-risk babies and could give them the
vaccine early to stop the disease process starting.
Unlike type 2 diabetes, which is related to lifestyle and diet, type 1 is an
auto-immune disease. In type 1 diabetes, the body's immune system reacts
against the insulin within the eyelet cells of the pancreas, and eventually
the cells stop producing insulin.
Prof Harrison has devised a test to detect children and young adults in the
early stages of the disease. He said the insulin in the nasal spray could
stop the type 1 rogue immune response and trigger a healthy response.
"That good immune response . . . will block the kind of immune response that
would cause destruction of insulin-producing cells," he said.
A five-year trial involving 38 children at Royal Melbourne Hospital and the
Hall Institute proved the vaccine protected against the development of
diabetes. Of the 38 children, 12 who began with very little or no
insulin-producing function went on to develop diabetes within one or two
years. None of the 26 who began the trial while still producing some of
their own insulin developed diabetes.
"We are very excited because we think it's a very significant step towards
prevention of type 1 diabetes," Prof Harrison said. "It's likely it won't
totally prevent diabetes in humans who have this treatment. But even if it .
. . delays the onset even just a few years, it would be significant."
The cost of treating someone who is a newly diagnosed diabetic is at least
$5000 a year.
An onset delay would reduce the risk of complications that cut life
expectancy by 15 years. These include heart disease, kidney failure,
blindness and amputation.
It is not known how long the vaccine lasts. Prof Harrison said it was likely
to be effective for months, but more trials were needed. All we know in the
trial is that it was safe, and that it induced changes in the immune system
consistent with protection, but in order to prove that, we have to, and we
are now going to this much larger multi-centre trial with many more
children, three doses, to prove that it definitively prevents the
development of diabetes.
Participants in the trial, which began in 1997, had weekly doses of nasal
insulin vaccine and blood tests every month for the first year.
"When we measured the ability of these children to make insulin every six
months we were pleasantly surprised . . . all the children who started out
with normal ability to make insulin remained stable," Prof Harrison said.
He hoped his model of immune regulation could be used to treat or prevent
other auto-immune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid
arthritis. Prof Harrison is now preparing for an international trial.
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