With the number of type 1 diabetes diagnosis’s worldwide on the rise, researchers have been looking to a possible link between diabetes and viruses as a cause. While a link has clearly been established, it is not clear that any particular virus directly causes diabetes. Viruses that cause the common cold, flu, and meningitis, the enteroviruses, are of particular concern. The link between diabetes and viruses is detailed in a report published by BMJ in 2011 involving 4448 participants. The study concluded that there is a clinically significant association between type 1 diabetes and viruses in the enterovirus group. The results are still a little controversial.
What does this Study of Diabetes and Viruses Mean?
At the bottom line of the study, the link between diabetes and viruses is established an association of enterovirus and type 1 diabetes at a 95% confidence ratio. The controversial part of the study is that it can’t establish if it is the virus that causes the diabetes type 1 or if having type 1 diabetes leaves the patient more susceptible to the virus.
Type 1 diabetes is thought to be caused by a complex interplay between the immune system, genetic predisposition, and environmental factors. In Europe, the average annual increase of type 1 diabetes occurrence has increased by 3.9%. This is too fast of an increase to be accounted for by genetic predisposition alone. This is what lead researchers to see what environmental factors could account for the disparity in the rise of type 1 diabetes. And viruses in the enterovirus group were the most studied of all the environmental factors relative to type 1 diabetes.
They reviewed 26 sets of research involving all the study participants and concluded “The association between enterovirus infection, detected with molecular methods, and diabetes was strong, with almost 10 times the odds of enterovirus infection in children at diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes.”
More studies will need to be conducted before any conclusions can be drawn as to what causes what. The research doesn’t give patients or doctors any actionable information, but it does put one more piece into place in the puzzle of understanding the causes of type 1 diabetes. This connection between diabetes and viruses may lead to developing new prevention strategies. But there are literally hundreds of enteroviruses, so there is clearly more work to be done. The hope is that more studies will pinpoint which particular viruses are the culprits, and that a vaccine manufacturer could use that information to develop a vaccine.
