Is a Virus Infection the Trigger That Leads to Type 1 Diabetes?
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Is a Virus Infection the Trigger That Leads to Type 1 Diabetes?
IRAS ID
152086
Contact name
Desmond Johnston
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Imperial College London
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
The aim of the research is to look for any indirect evidence of an infective trigger associated with the onset of type 1 diabetes (T1D). The epidemiology of T1D is suggestive of the involvement of an infectious agent, and evidence has accumulated over many years for human enteroviruses. Failure to detect the virus itself could be subsequent to the viral clearance by the immune system by the time of investigation. Our proposal takes a new approach to the identification of an infectious agent using high throughput gene sequencing technology to analyse the immune repertoire of patients and controls.
There is now good genetic evidence for infections being involved in T1D. There are also interesting data from postmortem pancreatic tissues, taken from young people with T1D, showing that 60% of them had evidence of enterovirus infection, while the virus was only found in 6% of pancreatic tissue taken from people of the same age who did not have T1D.
This information is sufficiently compelling to encourage us to use new generation sequencing technology to analyse the immunological repertoire of people with T1D, within 6 months from the time of diagnosis, and to compare this to closely matched controls.We aim to identify immunological signatures of current or previous infections associated with T1D. We shall also take samples for direct and indirect evidence of virus infection (eg.viral RNA, viral antibodies and metabolomic analysis).
REC name
London - Chelsea Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/LO/1648
Date of REC Opinion
24 Nov 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion