VIRUSES that cause diarrhoea and vomiting may also trigger diabetes, a discovery that could one day lead to a vaccine.
Type 1 diabetes is genetic, but if one identical twin develops the disease, the other has only a 40 per chance of getting it too, so an environmental trigger must also be at work. One suspect is a family of viruses called Coxsackie B enteroviruses (CVB), which might prompt the immune system to attack insulin-producing pancreatic cells, causing diabetes.
To investigate, Noel Morgan at the in Plymouth, UK, and colleagues analysed the pancreases of 72 children who had died of type 1 diabetes shortly after becoming ill. They found evidence of CVB in more than 60 per cent. There was almost no evidence of infection in tissue from children who had not had diabetes (Diabetologia, ).
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