One of my professors in medical school a few years back told me that, in the end, almost every disease will be proven to have some infectious trigger or component. We scoffed, being the know-it-all med students that we were, but the data is accumulating on his side.
The theories on coronary disease and chlamydia. Crohn's disease and mycobacteria. All of the cancer-causing viruses out there. No damning evidence yet for ALL diseases, but definitely something to consider in our microbe-laden world. Add diabetes to that list.
The first study I saw on this front was in JAMA last year, which looked at an interesting subtype of diabetes, mostly present in sub-saharan Africa. These patients would be especially prone to episodes of ketosis and severe hyperglycemia, with intervening periods where they wouldn't require insulin and have normal sugars. They found a fairly impressive rate of human herpes virus 8 infection at disease onset, compared with non-diabetic controls and controls with typical diabetes. It hasn't been replicated in other populations yet, but work on this is pending.
Adding to this are two studies discussed in an editorial in JAMA this week. The first found, from pancreas samples obtained at autopsy, much higher rates of enterovirus infection in the pancreases of type 1 diabetics compared with non-diabetics. The pancreatic protein expression profile was also consistent with a chronic viral infection. Further, the second study looked at rates of diabetes in a large sample of people, with those who have a variant in the gene IFIH1, a well-known enzyme that's involved, among other things, in our response to picornaviruses, of which enterovirus is one. Those who had a rare variant in this gene had a lower rate of type 1 diabetes.
Obviously, all of this holds tremendous implications, possibly further indicting a maladaptive immune response to a viral trigger as being a potential etiology for diabetes. We don't currently have any antivirals for the viruses implicated, so we can't fend off diabetes that way. Also, this is all for type I diabetes, what is now well-recognized to be a very different disease than type 2 diabetes, for which I have yet to see documented evidence of a known infectious trigger.
All this to say that it is an exciting time to be researching infectious diseases, since they seem to be the common pathway for so many different illnesses. The lesson: Wash your hands.
References:
Eugène Sobngwi, MD, PhD; Siméon Pierre Choukem, MD; Felix Agbalika, MD, MSc; Bertrand Blondeau, PhD; Lila-Sabrina Fetita, MD; Céleste Lebbe, MD, PhD; Doudou Thiam, MD; Pierre Cattan, MD, PhD; Jérôme Larghero, MD, PhD; Fabienne Foufelle, PhD; Pascal F (2008). Ketosis-Prone Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and Human Herpesvirus 8 Infection in Sub-Saharan Africans JAMA, 299 (23), 2770-2776
Richardson, S., Willcox, A., Bone, A., Foulis, A., & Morgan, N. (2009). The prevalence of enteroviral capsid protein vp1 immunostaining in pancreatic islets in human type 1 diabetes Diabetologia DOI: 10.1007/s00125-009-1276-0
Nejentsev, S., Walker, N., Riches, D., Egholm, M., & Todd, J. (2009). Rare Variants of IFIH1, a Gene Implicated in Antiviral Responses, Protect Against Type 1 Diabetes Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1167728
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Well, people are certainly trying!
ReplyDeleteAt least in the field of cancer (my own), the progress seems to have slowed down significantly, though. It is likely that all major oncogenic viruses in humans have been discovered by now.
Nice Article....
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ReplyDeleteIt took almost one year for my first real outbreak but it was the hardest thing in the world to get along with. I felt so unwanted and dirty. I tried many formulas, suggestions, methods to get rid of it permanently. Booked appointment with many doctors, professionals, even religiously until I started getting away spiritually and still it won't go. The worst is my outbreaks occurs within short period and take as long as even weeks to go away. I was at last placed on antiviral treatment which is a good treatment but for how long? I prayed every four times a day for God to cure me miraculously or direct me to cure because I know there is. During outbreaks I thought it's the end of the world but it's not, with time I will become normal again. I started trying fruits and herbs, take herbal produced, and with time became very interested in herbs. I read blogs, websites, and comments on herbs and built a stronger hope. I saw comments and decided to try Dr Utu African Traditional Herbal meds. I know of one mr Brown who was HIV and now brags he was cured of HIV with Dr Utu traditional meds but never give it a thought because I believed HIV already has a cure and never think it through or make a research. And for herpes my doctor told me that there is no known cure. When I saw testimonies of his Herpes cure on sites. I copied his contact drutuherbalcure@gmail.com. I showed it to brown who confirmed it was Dr Utu contact. I contacted him immediately and he also prepared and sent me herbal herpes meds through DHL. Right after getting this traditional meds I followed the prescription cautiously and withing days I started noticing rapid change and I know within me it's the cure. I used it for up to two weeks and when my test result was out not only did this herbal meds cure me but boost my immune and I feel real and free. Dr Utu African Traditional meds have successfully cured Herpes, Warts, HIV, Cancers, Kidney Stone, Asthma, most importantly this traditional meds boost immune and have no after effect.