Factoid:
In the United States, about 29,000 new cases of type I diabetes are diagnosed each year, and about one million American are currently affected. The less serious type II form of diabetes affects about 10 percent of Americans over age 40.
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Diabetes-Causing Gene Identified
Suppressing the activity of a gene called GAD could prevent the destruction of insulin-producing cells that causes dangerous type I diabetes.
Start Date: 5/25/99
Type I diabetes, the more serious form of the disease which develops in childhood and requires a life-long regimen of daily insulin injections, is caused by a particular gene that tells the human immune system to kill insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. That is the finding of researchers at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, reported in the May 14, 1999 issue of the journal Science.
The research team, headed by Dr. Ji-Won Yoon, identified a gene called GAD which triggers an auto-immune process that kills insulin-producing cells. "We found that if we suppress GAD expression in the pancreatic cells, then we can prevent diabetes," said Yoon.
So far, the research has been carried out on mice. But it could lead to an eventual vaccine that would prevent the onset of Type 1 diabetes.
According to Dr. Robert Goldstein, medical director of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, Yoon's discovery is a "very important step" toward a possible diabetes vaccine. But Goldstein cautioned that much more research must be done before a vaccine could be developed. Yoon also cautioned that a vaccine could be 10 or 15 years away. One concern, he said, is that suppression of the GAD gene might have unpredictable negative side-effects.
In the United States, about 29,000 new cases of type I diabetes are diagnosed each year, and about one million American are currently affected. The less serious type II form of diabetes, which usually appears after age 40, affects far more people. Either type, if not treated, can cause kidney failure, blindness, heart disease and death.
 Excelsior, Michael Lindemann's new novel (written under the pen name Michael Paul), depicts a wholly plausible near future in which human cloning is both widespread and widely abused; terrorists have access to target-specific biological weapons; recreational space travel is commonplace; and mounting pressures of global climate change, environmental decline, population growth and civil unrest inspire radical new approaches to urban security.
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