Link found between diabetes and the immune system

Researchers in Canada and the United States have uncovered a link between type 2 diabetes and problems with the body’s immune system, a breakthrough that it is hoped could lead to new immune system therapies for type 2 diabetes .
Although it has long been known that people suffering from type 1 diabetes have malfunctions in their immune system which destroy the insulin -producing cells in the pancreas, the type 2 version of the condition has not previously been seen as an autoimmune disorder .
However, this new study by scientists at the University of Toronto and Stanford University, and published in the journal Nature Medicine, has shown that immune system abnormalities could be involved in type 2 diabetes. In laboratory experiments, it was revealed that a mouse could develop type 2 diabetes due to a manipulation of its immune system.
It was also shown that blood samples from type 2 diabetes patients contained antibodies against some of their own proteins, which was explained as being due to their immune systems turning on them.
Daniel Winer, one of the lead authors on the study, commented “This data is highly suggestive that there is an autoimmune component in type 2 diabetes.”