Studying the composition of the gut flora in four-month-old children with a genetic predisposition to type 1 diabetes could help predict which of them will eventually develop the disease, according to a US study.
Dr. Mark Atkinson of the University of Florida reported on them at the 46th annual meeting of the European Society for the Study of Diabetes (EASD).
Type 1 diabetes is caused by the destruction of insulin-producing cells in the pancreas by the immune system, the so-called beta cells. It is included in the so-called autoimmune diseases. The disease is revealed when about 80 percent is destroyed. beta cells of the pancreas (most often in childhood or adolescence), because then the production of insulin is no longer sufficient to properly control the level of glucose in the blood.
There are many genes known whose variants increase the predisposition to type 1 diabetes, but having them does not mean that a child will get sick. Research shows that some environmental triggering factor – most likely the presence of some kind of microorganism – is needed for the immune system to develop autoimmunity against the islets of the pancreas. And because the gut walls are exposed to many microorganisms, scientists have begun to suspect that the gut flora may be involved in the development of type 1 diabetes.
Dr. Atkinson and colleagues analyzed the composition of the intestinal flora in rats with or without a genetic predisposition to this disease. The researchers observed that the two groups of rodents differed significantly in the number of bacteria belonging to 24 species and 18 genera, as well as hundreds of others that they could not classify.
This prompted them to analyze the gut microbiota of people under the Finnish Diabetes Prediction and Prevention Program (DIPP). It involves examining the genetic predisposition to type 1 diabetes in newborns and tracking whether they will develop the disease in the future.
It turned out that the composition of bacteria in the stool of children who had autoimmune immune system to pancreatic islets differed from that of their peers who did not. In autoimmune children, researchers noted a decrease in the number of Firmicutes bacteria, such as lactic acid bacteria, and an increase in Bacteroidetes, which are a normal component of the digestive system flora, but become the cause of abdominal infections in immunocompromised people. In healthy children, it was exactly the opposite.
According to Dr. Atkinson, although this finding has yet to be confirmed in other experiments, it indicates that the risk of developing type 1 diabetes in genetically predisposed children can be assessed as early as the fourth month of life on the basis of the composition of the stool bacterial flora.
Scientists also hope that they will be able to identify specific strains of bacteria that can protect against type 1 diabetes or increase its risk. As a result, in the future, specific bacteria could be used to prevent this disease in children at risk. (PAP)