Is There a Vaccine for Diabetes?

Type 1 diabetes accounts for around 10% of all diabetes cases. However, for those who suffer with the disorder, it can be potentially life threatening. Needless to say, a diabetes vaccine would be a massive step forward.

What if we already had one? Recent research into the rotavirus vaccine found that it may actually reduce the risk of developing type 1 diabetes…

What is type 1 diabetes?

With the vast majority of diabetes diagnosis being type 2, people are generally more aware of that specific disorder than its type 1 counterpart. The two are similar in that they both stem from issues with insulin.

With type 2 diabetes, the body’s cells don’t get enough insulin. That’s either down to the pancreas not producing enough or because the body’s cells have become resistant to it. However, with type 1, the body’s antibodies attack the pancreas resulting in it simply not making insulin. It’s known as an autoimmune disorder.

While type 2 is often put down to environmental factors, such as diet and lifestyle, the cause of type 1 diabetes is less clear. Some research suggest that people may be genetically predisposed. In most cases, type 1 diabetes is developed in childhood, while type 2 can be developed at any point in a person’s life.

A diabetes vaccine

While it can’t help existing sufferers of type 1 diabetes, a vaccine could potentially be used to protect children from developing the disease in the first place. That’s what happened in an a University of Michigan study looking at rotavirus vaccines.

Rotavirus is common in young children, causing diarrhea amongst other symptoms. In countries without proper medical care, it can even lead to death. There are now multiple vaccines available for rotavirus, but when studying these vaccines, researchers noticed an interesting trend – children given the vaccine were also found to be less likely to develop diabetes.

Checking the findings

Dr Mary Rogers decided to have a closer look, to make sure it wasn’t just a coincidence. She used data from a much larger sample of national data from US children and found that children who had received a complete course of rotavirus vaccinations were 41% less likely to develop type 1 diabetes.

In future, we could see laboratories working on a vaccine specifically designed to prevent diabetes from developing – and much lower rates of type 1 diabetes in adults. Want to find out more about the laboratory industry? Be sure to read the article ‘News Bites from the UK Laboratory Industry’