This week on Show Me the Science, Professor Luke O’Neill explained the science behind type-1 diabetes – how people develop the condition, its symptoms, and the treatments that could be available in the future.

“Type-1 diabetes is a classic autoimmune disease,” Prof O’Neill explained.

“It’s caused by your own immune system going into your pancreas, killing your beta cells.

“The beta cells make insulin, and insulin is extremely important as a hormone; it’s needed for you to absorb glucose from your diet.

“If you can’t absorb the glucose, it builds up and causes all kinds of harm – and this is a lethal disease if left untreated."

Prof O’Neill said this is opposed to type-2 diabetes, where a person still produces insulin, but is unable to respond to it.

“Type-1 you can’t make insulin because the immune system has destroyed the cells making it,” he said.

“Type-2 you make it, but your body stops responding and you become resistant to insulin.”

Person with diabetes doing a blood test with a glucometer

According to Prof O’Neill, early symptoms to watch out for include a persistent feeling of thirst, hunger, and a need to urinate frequently.

“Your body’s trying to get rid of all this glucose and so you’re peeing all the time, and that can be very uncomfortable – that's a key symptom,” he said.

“You get really hungry because your body isn’t absorbing the nutrients anymore and that sends a signal to your brain to eat more.

“You lose a lot of weight, and then you’ll feel very fatigued because all this glucose clogging up your system causes effects on the brain as well.

“Then vision problems, because the eye gets full of sugar as well and that can interfere with how the visual system operates, and then nausea because of all this high glucose.”

Treatments for diabetes

Type-1 diabetes is typically treated with daily insulin injections or an insulin pump, regular glucose monitoring and maintaining a strict diet and exercise routine.

However, Prof O’Neill said that work is currently underway to try and cure the disease once and for all.

“There’s lots of efforts afoot using stem cells to grow a pancreas and then put it in the body, or grow a clump of beta cells in a sort of special device,” he said.

“That’s the cell therapy type approach; but the immune therapy approach is getting really interesting as well.

“In the immune side, there’s a drug called teplizumab, that’s targeting a thing called CD3, which is on these T-cells that bust up the pancreas.

“There’s also a thing called a GABA receptor agonist, which can boost insulin production from the pancreas as well."

Prof O’Neill explained that these approaches are trying to stop the body from attacking its own pancreas.

He said that while tother immunosuppressant drugs can have unwanted side effects, these methods are being tailored to focus only on the immune system’s response to the pancreas.

Main image: Luke O'Neill (L), person with glucose monitor for diabetes (R).