14 DAY TRIAL // Newly identified role of a T cell in type 1 diabetes could open the way to a future treatment for young patients, according to a new research carried out by a team of scientists from the University of British Columbia and the Child & Family Research Institute (CFRI) at BC Children's Hospital.
The researchers were led by Rusung Tan, a Pathology professor in the UBC Faculty of Medicine and co-head of the Immunity in Health and Disease research cluster at CFRI.
The team has discovered the abundance of Th17 cells, which are a type of T cell that was discovered back in 2005, in children newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
Tan, who is also a member of the Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine at BC Children's Hospital and a senior scholar of the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, explained that “T cells are white blood cells and key members of the immune system that control infections.'
“In healthy individuals, Th17 cells provide a strong defense against bacteria and viruses by guiding the immune system to strongly attack infected targets within our bodies.”
Still, Th17 has been linked to several other autoimmune diseases, such as Crohn's disease, and this implies that these cell can also play a very harmful role.
As Th17 cells are very dangerous, there are currently clinical trials using treatments that were designed to block them.
“The elevated levels of Th17 cells in type 1 diabetes patients suggest that these cells may also play a key role in the early development of this disease in young patients,” Tan concludes.
“This discovery opens the door to new treatments for childhood diabetes that target Th17 cells.”
type 1 diabetes is also called juvenile diabetes, and it is an autoimmune disease that affects mainly children and young adults.
People suffering from this disease undergo attacks from their own body, which destroys insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, that regulate glucose.
The results of this research are published in the current issue of the Journal of Immunology.