Protein fragment halts type I diabetes
By Nathan Seppa
A protein-based drug injected into people who are just starting to show signs of diabetes can stop the disease in its tracks, two studies show. The research trials offer hope that early intervention can prevent or curtail type I, or juvenile-onset, diabetes.
In type I diabetes, the immune system destroys insulin-producing beta cells housed in the pancreas. This damage leaves a person unable to process sugars.
Immunologist Dana Elias, while at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, in the 1990s, made a surprising discovery. She found that the immune system in one strain of diabetic mice produced antibodies to their own heat-shock protein 60.