Earlier this week, I talked about how the flu vaccine is useful in lowering our cardiac risk. Today, we’ll examine its relationship to diabetes.
Some diabetes is related to our bodies insensitivity to insulin (type 2), so cells don’t have effective uptake of sugar from our blood. This diabetes variant is linked to diet and lifestyle, and with our tend towards obesity is growing in numbers. (It can also be reversed if we change our diet and lifestyles.)
The other major type of diabetes (type 1) is related to the immune system destroying pancreatic cells. This is an inherited trait, with an environmental trigger. (This is the type of diabetes many of us were trying to treat with our artificial pancreas devices.) This type of diabetes cannot be reversed by diet or lifestyle changes.
Since many folks manifest type 1 after suffering from an infection, other researchers were examining which virus may be the environmental trigger; both enteroviri and rotaviri were implicated, but never proven to be the “one”. For example, doctors in Japan and Italy noticed a large upsurge in type 1 diabetes after the 2009 flue pandemic, but that was circumstantial evidence.
Dr.Ilaria Capua (World Organization for Animal Health) led a team of 15 researchers in the quest for answers. She and her team infected turkeys with flu. Knowing that flu-infected turkeys have inflamed pancreas (even if the virus does not spread beyong the lungs), they wanted to see if this damage was permanent and led to diabetes. The results were published in the December 2012 issue of the Journal of Virology.
Once they determined this was true for the turkeys (close to 50% developed type 1 diabetes), the researchers also infected pacreatic tissue with two different viri. The researchers found that the inflammatory response was similar to that leading to type 1 diabetes. The research team is now inspecting other animal models- in particular, the mouse.
Capua’s theorem to preclude the “switching on” of Type 1 Diabetes is simple. Even if only a few percentage of type 1 diabetes is triggered by the flu, inoculating those genetically predisposed with flu vaccine can have a real impact, lowering the 65000 new cases each year. With this new data, the campaign can begin.
Good bit of information here, Dr. A. Having diabetes on both sides of my family (but not having it yet myself) I can tell you I soak up information like this all the time.
Lisa Brandel recently posted..Dragonfly In Blue by Lisa Brandel
As long as you USE the information you soak up, Lisa, that’s fine. As one of my more favorite sobriquets vents…
The art of intelligence is to employ facts in a creative fashion and to adjust one’s efforts accordingly. Acquiring data is NOT intelligent!
Wow. This is an incredible association. Who would think that flu would trigger Diabetes Type I. I did notice in my own kids that a cold triggered allergies, even a milk allergy in one of them. You never know.
Ann Mullen recently posted..Senior Care: Preventing Elderly Falls
Actually, Ann, I don’t think that the cold triggered allergies. I think the bodies defenses were “down” during the cold, so the mild allerg(y)(ies) that existed daily managed to reach the forefront, since the immune system had bigger battles to fight.
Wow! I would never have thought that there’d be a link. Diabetes runs in both sides of my family as well. I’ll be looking out for those flu vaccine campaigns. =) That’ll help me on both counts!
Samantha Bangayan recently posted..When the Right Doors Open: A True Passion for Acting
Samantha, there always was a hint… We knew something had to “turn on” these genetic markers. And, now that we know, we can try to insure that they never get their hands on the “on” switch…
Very interesting. Will have to send the link to Tammie (has diabetes)…
Carolina HeartStrings recently posted..SHRIMP TOAST
Note, Alessa, that this describes the confluence of flu and Type I, not type II…
Hmm. Having diabetes on both sides of the family, I need to be careful about information like this. Also, I was diagnosed with hypoglycemia recently. So, looking into how this works for the other end of the spectrum.
This is probably the time to examine a different diet as well, Hajra. Check out this piece on ketogenic diets…https://www.adjuvancy.com/wordpress/http:/www.adjuvancy.com/wordpress/hope-kidney-patients/