posted 01/15/03
A virus generally believed to be a cause of diabetes might
actually help protect people against the disorder.
That, according to a results of a University of
Nebraska Medical Center study where researchers led by the husband-wife team of
virologists Drs. Steven Tracy and Nora Chapman injected various strains of the
virus - coxsackievirus - into mice that were genetically engineered to contract
diabetes.
The researchers found two- to tenfold decreases
in type 1 diabetes among those mice over a 10-month period when compared with
mice that had not been injected with the virus.
The results were published in a December 2002
issue of the Journal of Virology.
"What it could mean, many years down the road, is
a potential vaccine against type 1 diabetes," Tracy told the Omaha World-Herald.
The concept is so contradictory to existing
theories about the virus that the researchers struggled to find a journal
willing to publish their results. But Tracy believes his results are more
credible than evidence suggesting the virus may help cause diabetes.
Using a live virus to create a vaccine isn't new.
That is how the polio vaccine was created 4 decades ago. But it is new to
suggest a virus could protect people against a disease that is partly caused by
genetics.
Tracy and Chapman now are studying which strains
of the virus are most effective and how they affect older mice. They also are
addressing a major complication that surfaced in their research; the virus
injections gave many of the mice pancreatitis, an inflammatory disease of the
pancreas.
The research group hopes to discover a protein
that could be given along with the virus to prevent that inflammation, Tracy
said.
Source: Diabetes In Control Dot Com.
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