TYPE 1 DIABETES
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Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease. This means that the immune system, which primarily serves to defend the body against germs, attacks the body’s own structures. In the case of type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks and destroys the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Insulin is a vital hormone that transports sugar from the blood into the cells. If the body can only produce little or no insulin itself, the sugar accumulates in the blood. This leads to health problems. This is why people with type 1 diabetes need insulin injections for the rest of their lives in order to manage the disease and prevent complications.
Learn more about type 1 diabetes in the following video:
Find out about the early detection and prevention of type 1 diabetes
How does type 1 diabetes develop and how can the disease be identified as early as possible? What research is being carried out in the search for treatment options? The video from the Diabetes Information Service at Helmholtz Zentrum München and the German Center for Diabetes Research gives a brief and clear explanation of the role of autoantibodies as markers for early detection and describes vaccination studies and other approaches for the early treatment of type 1 diabetes.
Research findings in recent years suggest that a window of opportunity exists in infancy and early toddlerhood in which the autoimmune response and thus the disease type 1 diabetes may be preventable. With our two prevention studies, SINT1A and POInT, we aim to find out how the development of type 1 autoimmunity and the development of type 1 diabetes can be prevented. Learn more about our prevention studies here
