Scientists hope cheap drug will PREVENT type 1 diabetes
CHILDREN at risk of diabetes type 1 will be tested to see if a cheap drug can prevent the condition.
Children will be take part in a new diabetes study
Scientists are hoping a new study could see if the drug metformin - the world’s most commonly prescribed diabetes medicine - can cut the risk of developing the condition.
They will be testing children aged five to 16 in Scotland, the country with the third highest rate of type 1 diabetes, to see if they are at risk of developing it.
If they are found to be at risk they will have the opportunity to take part in the trial.
If successful, researchers believe the large-scale trial could explain why the incidence of type 1 diabetes has risen five-fold in the last 40 years, and provide a means of preventing it.
Children aged five to 16 will take the diabetes medicine metformin
Researchers have previously thought type 1 diabetes is an disease caused by a faulty immune system which attacks and destroys insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas.
Clinical trials have tried drugs that suppress the immune system to attempt to subdue the attack, but the results have so far been disappointing.
However scientists are hoping the results from the clinical trial could lead to a breakthrough. They are hypothesising that damaged insulin-producing that beta cells, stressed by being
made to work too hard in a modern environment, send out signals that switch on the immune system.
The study will test whether metformin, which is known to protect the beta cells from stress, can stop the immune response that goes on to destroy them.
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Professor Terence Wilkin, is leading the study called the autoimmune diabetes Accelerator Prevention Trial (adAPT) of the University of Exeter Medical School.
"We still have no means of preventing type 1 diabetes, which, at all ages, results from insufficient insulin,” he said.
“We all lose beta cells over the course of our lives, but most of us have enough for normal function.
“However, if the rate of beta cell loss is accelerated, type 1 diabetes develops, and the faster the loss, the younger the onset of the condition.
“The accelerator hypothesis talks of fast and slow type 1 diabetes – beta cell loss which progresses at different rates in different people, and appears at different ages as a result.”
Doctors will study insulin-producing beta cells
It is thought that 80,000 children develop type 1 diabetes worldwide each year.
There is currently no way of preventing childhood diabetes in children and no cure, meaning type 1 diabetes patients face strict dietary controls and multiple daily injections of insulin for life.
During the trial, each child will receive metformin or a placebo initially for four months, during which they will be tested to assess how their immune system is responding.
The first stage of the trial will assess whether the medication can reduce beta cell stress and how many participants will be needed to progress the study.
If the trial medication is found to lower beta cell stress effectively, the children in stage 1 will progress into the next stages of the trial.
The research in collaboration with Professor Stephen Greene, of the University of Dundee, and NHS Tayside's Clinical Trials Unit.
Scientists hope to find a preventative cure