Novel Enterovirus vaccine shown to prevent development of Type 1 diabetes in experimental mouse model

Type 1 diabetes is a worldwide health problem that has increased in its incidence over the years, where approximately 1.25 million children and 1.25 million adults in the US alone have the condition, and where rates of individuals with type 1 diabetes are increasing by 1.8% annually according to the CDC. In Finland and Sweden, where the prevalence of type 1 diabetes is the highest worldwide, around 1 in 200 people have type 1 diabetes. Unlike type 2 diabetes where the development of insulin resistance is the cause for diabetes, type 1 diabetes is caused by the destruction of pancreas cells that secrete the hormone insulin. Through much research, it has been shown that type 1 diabetes is associated with some viral infections like enterovirus, but it has never been proven exactly how this phenomenon occurs.

Very recently in Finland, a group of researchers have shown for the first time, that a novel enterovirus vaccine prevents the development of viral induced type 1 diabetes in an experimentally relevant mouse model. Professor Tullberg from the Karolinska Institutet, whose group led the efforts in the pre-clinical trials, asserted that these groundbreaking results would surely shed some new light on how enteroviruses are involved in causing type 1 diabetes. Future projects stemming from these results will try to incorporate other viruses that are also associated with viral induced type 1 diabetes like rotavirus and mumps virus into the vaccine. Before that happens however, Dr. Hytonen, who developed the vaccine, states that he hopes to “validate an enterovirus vaccine similar to the commonly used poliovirus vaccine, which has the potential to establish whether enteroviruses play a role in Type 1 diabetes.”  Whatever the case may be, this prototype vaccine was a big step forward in the development of vaccines that will prevent type 1 diabetes in humans. Even more breakthroughs are in the horizon, major changes are coming that will impact millions of lives, hopefully relatively soon.
-Daniel Gutierrez

Source:
https://www.uta.fi/en/news/story/enterovirus-vaccine-prevents-virus-induced-diabetes-type-1-diabetes-experimental-model