Studies conducted on twins have evidenced the fact that an environmental factor may also be at work in the development of diabetes in children who are genetically-predisposed to developing the disease. Researchers at the Peninsula Medical School, in Plymouth, the UK, have established that viral infections, such as those that trigger diarrhea and vomiting, may also be responsible for the onset of diabetes in youngsters with specific types of genetic make-up.

In the future, this discovery could potentially have tremendous implications for the way in which doctors handle patients predisposed to diabetes, in that they might possibly create vaccines that could be administered to the children at risk of developing the condition. They would act even before the disease sets in, protecting these kids against it.

In the studies investigator Noel Morgan has conducted, he has noted that twins who were both predisposed to developing type-one diabetes behaved differently when it came to their response to the disease. Even if one of them already got the condition, the other one only had about 40 percent chances of contracting it, which has made researchers look for explanations as to why that happens. They have discovered that the children who went on to suffer from the affliction were also exposed to viral infections caused by members of the Coxsackie B enteroviruses (CVBs) viral family.

“This is the first time that scientists have been able to provide such extensive evidence for the relationship between enteroviral infection of the beta cells and the development of type 1 diabetes,” the researcher says.

“The study is hugely significant because, for the first time, we have a large enough study of pancreas post mortem samples from patients who died near to diagnosis – this has been lacking and therefore we have had to rely on the odd case report,” King's College London School of Medicine scientist Mark Peakman concludes.