(TXT) Interferons May Help Prevent Some Diabetes Cases

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MEDLINEplus: Interferons May Help Prevent Some Diabetes CasesMonday,

April 01, 2002 9:36 PM

Interferons May Help Prevent Some Diabetes

Cases

 

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Interferons May Help Prevent Some Diabetes Cases

Reuters

Monday, March 4, 2002

 

 

By Merritt McKinney

NEW YORK, Mar 04 (Reuters Health) - New research reveals how

insulin-producing cells in the pancreas may protect themselves from viruses

that can cause diabetes.

 

Knowing how insulin-producing cells defend themselves may lead to a better

understanding of what goes wrong in people with type 1 diabetes and other

so-called autoimmune diseases that cause the immune system to turn against

the body's own tissues, experts say.

 

Type 1 diabetes is sometimes called juvenile diabetes because it usually

strikes at a younger age than the more common type 2 diabetes. In type 1

diabetes, the immune system attacks insulin-producing cells, leading to low

or nonexistent levels of the sugar-regulating hormone. People with this type

of diabetes must take daily insulin injections.

 

There are many possible causes of type 1 diabetes, but some cases are

thought to be triggered by common viruses called enteroviruses. Most of the

time, enteroviruses do not cause any symptoms, but they can cause cold or

flu-like symptoms and more serious complications in rare cases.

 

Sometimes infection with an enterovirus called coxsackievirus B4 (CVB4)

leads to type 1 diabetes by destroying insulin-producing cells in the

pancreas (called beta cells). Little is known about how beta cells normally

protect themselves against viral infections, however.

 

Now Dr. Nora Sarvetnick, of The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla,

California, and colleagues report that pancreatic beta cells depend on

chemicals called interferons to protect themselves from viral infections.

 

When the researchers infected mice with CVB4 but blocked the normal release

of interferons, beta cells could not protect themselves and were destroyed.

Deprived of these insulin-producing cells, these mice rapidly developed a

form of diabetes similar to that caused by enteroviruses in people.

 

" Our findings show that the beta cell itself contains critical circuits that

control its survival, " Sarvetnick and her colleagues state in the advance

online edition of the journal Nature Immunology. Once the self-defense

tactics of beta cells were blocked, the cells were vulnerable to an attack

by immune-system cells called natural killer cells.

 

" The critical thing antiviral responses do is save the tissue from instant

killing by the innate immune system, which is the body's first line of

defense, " Sarvetnick told Reuters Health.

 

Some cases of diabetes, Sarvetnick and her colleagues suggest, could occur

when beta cells cannot defend themselves against viruses. By learning more

about how interferon encourages beta cells to defend themselves, scientists

may be able to develop an antiviral therapy to prevent type 1 diabetes, the

researchers note.

 

The study is important, according to Dr. Noel Rose, of the Johns Hopkins

Bloomberg School of Public Health, because it shows how a viral infection

can interact with the immune system to cause an autoimmune disease. By

focusing on the initial response to a common virus, the researchers have

provided evidence " that these early events can cause immune-mediated

destruction of the cells, " Rose told Reuters Health. The Johns Hopkins

scientist was not involved in the study.

 

" The finding may help us to understand how a virus can trigger other

autoimmune diseases, " he said.

SOURCE: Nature Immunology advance online publication 2002;10.1038/ni771.

 

 

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