Could parasites be the key to preventing type 1 diabetes?

A story about how parasites may help to prevent disorders of the immune system – including autoimmune conditions like type 1 diabetes – hit the news this week.

Professor Anne Cooke’s team at the University of Cambridge is investigating how infections with parasites in early life can influence the development of the immune system, and how this might relate to type 1 diabetes.

Using mice that have been selectively bred to spontaneously develop type 1 diabetes, the team have been researching whether particular infections can block the development of the condition. The study that has been in the news this week focuses on giving extracts from a tropical parasite, Schistosoma mansoni, to the mice. The results are very successful, and the team has shown that mice treated with the extract do not go on to develop type 1 diabetes.

But Professor Cooke warns that we are still some way off developing a treatment for humans based on this research. ‘At the moment we are giving the mice extracts made from the parasites, and these are essentially a cocktail of many different substances. Although we can see that these extracts are having an effect, we don’t know exactly how they working in the body to modulate the immune system, and we don’t know what particular substances are having the effect’.

‘Before we could even think of treating a child with type 1 diabetes, we need to conduct more research to understand which substances in the parasitic extracts are having an effect on the immune system, and how they create this effect.’

JDRF is providing funding for Professor Cooke’s team to carry out another piece of research looking at preventing the development of type 1 diabetes through infection. This study focuses on infecting the mice with a strain of Salmonella bacteria. This study is slightly different as it uses mice that have already begun to show signs of developing type 1 diabetes.

Innovative work like that carried out by Professor Cooke’s team is improving our understanding of how our genes and our environment come together to influence our risk of developing type 1 diabetes. This work may eventually lead to new treatments that could prevent type 1 diabetes from developing in the first place.

Visit the research section to read more about JDRF-funded research.