In focus: Type one diabetes

Recent scientific breakthroughs have pointed to the possibility of better treatment options for type one diabetes. Tampere University in Finland recently announced that a team of its scientists have identified the exact virus that leads to type one diabetes developing. This discovery has put the illness firmly in the spotlight.

Type one diabetes affects around ten per cent of all adults that have diabetes and requires daily injections of insulin as well as a healthy diet and exercise to help combat the effects. It is also the most common type of diabetes that affects children and as such is the subject of much research.

Although scientists are continuing to strive for better and more effective treatments for the disease and, perhaps in the future, a cure, many people do not seem to understand the differences between type one and type two diabetes.

Type one diabetes is known as insulin-dependent diabetes or early-onset diabetes, as it tends to develop within a person before the age of 40. It often develops in a person's teens, meaning that a person that is diagnosed with it, may live with it for the majority of their life.

This type of diabetes is caused when the pancreas fails to produce insulin, a hormone that ensures that glucose levels in the blood remain constant and safe. As the body does not produce insulin, a person diagnosed with type one diabetes must ensure they keep their blood-sugar levels balanced by injecting insulin on a daily basis and ensuring their diet is healthy.

In comparison, type two diabetes causes the body not to produce enough insulin or results in the body not reacting to the insulin it produces. This form of the illness is often known as insulin-resistant diabetes. Type two diabetes tends to affect older people, those above the age of 40, however; a larger amount of younger people are being diagnosed with it.

Until now, it has not been known what causes type one diabetes to develop but the identification of the exact virus that results in in the illness could help to develop better treatment methods. Future research will begin looking at creating a vaccine that could ultimately see the end to type one diabetes.