Originally published October 31 2005
Researchers find that type 1 diabetes can be predicted with series of tests
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Dr. Dorothy Becker, chief of the division of pediatric endocrinology and diabetes at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, oversaw a study of type 1 diabetes that resulted in the discovery that the disease can be effectively identified by combining a number of tests.
A combination of tests can accurately predict who will develop the inherited, type 1 form of diabetes, researchers announced Thursday.
"If we want to prevent type 1 diabetes, we need to know in whom to prevent it," explained senior researcher Dr. Dorothy Becker, chief of the division of pediatric endocrinology and diabetes at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.
Trials into the prevention of type 1 diabetes -- which affects about 5 percent of all diabetics -- have been stymied because researchers have lacked a reliable means of pinpointing individuals who are healthy now but at high risk of developing the disease later on, she added.
Type 1 diabetes "is probably an autoimmune disease: For whatever reason, the body's immune system turns around and recognizes [pancreatic] insulin-producing cells as 'not mine,' or foreign, and sets up a destructive process," Dr. Frank Vinicor, director of the division of diabetes translation at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, told reporters.
One screen, called the "islet cell antibody," can only predict the risk with about 50 percent accuracy, Becker said, and it is cumbersome and expensive.
Two more recently developed tests -- relying on diabetic 'biomarkers' called GAD65 and IA-2 -- are cheaper and easier but are still relatively inaccurate.
In their study, Becker and colleague Dr. Massimo Pietropaolo tracked the long-term health histories of almost 1,500 first-degree relatives of type 1 diabetics.
While the discovery, to be published in the December issue of Pediatric Diabetes, is good news for the fight against type 1 diabetes, the news for those with obesity-linked type 2 disease was less uplifting.
The prevalence of type 2 diabetes in the United States "is bad, it's been getting bad, and it's going to get worse before it gets better," said Vinicor.
In fact, new CDC figures released Wednesday showed that almost 21 million Americans have now been diagnosed with diabetes -- up 14 percent from numbers released just two years ago.
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