Studies have found that peptides produced by a certain type of gut bacteria can be used to prevent type 1 diabetes from deteriorating and the lack of such gut bacteria along with the peptides may be the reason for type 1 diabetes in newborn babies.
The study was conducted by a collaborative work of two French research organizations. In the investigation of immune reaction, the key bacteria that could play a role in the protection of body from diabetes were found. Then further researches were carried out to know more about the peptides and bacteria.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease and it will be presented when pancreas beta cells that produce insulin are damaged by other activities in the inner body environment. Then some symptoms will perform, and the typical ones are thirsty, natural weight loss without any trying. These performances may furtherly lead to kidney and heart damage. At present there isn’t a cure way for diabetes found, thus a leverage treatment is urgently needed to improve the situation of patients.
In the investigation scientists found that a type of peptide that is used to battle with a fixed species of bacteria are capable of treating some autoimmune diseases including type 1 diabetes. And the peptides are cathelicidin produced by gut bacteria. When inject the rats in type one diabetes condition with cathelicidin, there were improvement in the pancreas inflammation and symptoms of the disease. Before the injection of cathelicidin, scientists recorded that the diabetic rats was in lack of cathelicidin in their bodies.
The attempt was triggered by a guess put up with by the scientists. They thought there should be a type of peptide existing in the gut to prevent the development of diabetes.
With the material provided by the research, scientists put another connecting guess that the newborn babies contracting type 1 diabetes might be because of the absence of cathelicidin in the gut. However there is no such evidence can be used to prove this idea. More studies should be involved to make it clear.
What can be ensured from the research is that cathelicidin is able to prevent type 1 diabetes from stepping into a worse situation, which means that a new potential drug for type 1 diabetes may be available in the near future.
After the finding of the connection between gut bacteria and HIV vaccine failure, gut bacteria produced peptide is the second treatment provided by gut bacteria in recent days, which seems the function of gut bacteria was underestimated and there may be more new treatment from them waiting to be discovered.