Journal of IiME Volume 8 Issue 1 May 2014 Human Enteroviruses and Type 1 Diabetes by Steven Tracy1 Following on from our 2009 article by the same author Illustrating the complexities of translating basic research into clinical practice For some years now Invest in ME has been trying to interest other researchers to work within the areas of ME – partly to mainstream ME research and allow it to overcome the misinformation that has been allowed to be propagated over a generation, but also partly to use the great experience from other research which must be brought in and applied to ME research in order for progress to be made. The link between enteroviruses and ME has existed for many years but the lack of funding from establishment organisations has forced this to be banished to the sidelines, with just the work of Dr John Chia keeping alive the research in this area. Invest in ME has had Dr. Chia presenting at many of our conferences. We have also had Dr Nora Chapman from University of Nebraska presenting at our conference. Professor Steven Tracy is an expert on diabetes and enteroviruses. He wrote an article for IIME – Human Enteroviruses and Chronic Infectious Disease He has kindly given us permission to reproduce this article in our Journal. This is a good article to illustrate the amount of research that has gone into understanding the role of enteroviruses in T1D. We could not agree more with the conclusion of this article. Type1 Diabetes Our laboratories have been working with the CVB since the early 1980s to understand how the viruses induce human inflammatory heart disease (myocarditis). It was therefore a natural extension of our work to examine the putative connection between CVB infection and type 1 diabetes (T1D) onset. We use the nonobese diabetic (NOD) mouse as the animal model in which to study T1D onset. This is a well-established model used throughout the world for T1D research and one which is very useful for studying aspects of the virus-host relationship. Female NOD mice develop T1D at an incidence of between 70-100% of mice by 6 months of age: this means that for every 10 mice studied, 7-10 will naturally develop T1D by 6 months of age. Examination of the pancreatic islets in these mice shows that when mice are very young, no insulitis is apparent but by 6-8 weeks of age, insulitis has started to develop. Insulitis is inflammation of the islets, the places in the pancreas where beta cells are found. Beta cells produce insulin. When enough beta cells are destroyed, T1D occurs. Islet Invest in ME (Charity Nr. 1114035) www.investinme.org Page 27 of 52 1 Professor Steven Tracy Ph.D. Department of Pathology and Microbiology, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha NE 68198-6495; stracy@unmc.edu; 402-559-7747 Primary research interest: Molecular biology and pathogenesis of the group B coxsackieviruses since the early 1980s http://www.unmc.edu/pathology/type 1_diabetes.htm
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