UF researchers identified a group of stem-like immune cells that may help sustain the autoimmune attack in Type 1 diabetes, offering new insight into why the disease persists over time.
Type 1 diabetes isn’t an overnight attack against the body’s ability to make insulin. It can be a sustained campaign over years that relentlessly targets insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.
Scientists have not fully understood why this autoimmune attack — when the body’s immune system mistakenly destroys its own healthy cells — persists so long rather than petering out.
“People can generate autoimmunity occasionally, but it tends to be corralled by the body’s protective mechanisms,” said Todd Brusko, Ph.D., director of the University of Florida Diabetes Institute.
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