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Scientists Find the 'Real Culprit' Behind the Cause of Type 1 Diabetes
However, when interaction between an antigen-presenting cell and a lymphocyte leads to a part of the body being mistakenly identified as alien, the resulting attack harms the body, causing autoimmune diseases.
While dendritic cells' presence in the islets and their ability to summon immune attacks made them likely suspects in type 1 diabetes, it was difficult to isolate them from the pancreas for closer examination.
"They're very tiny and there are only about 5 to 10 of them per islet, each of which contains approximately a thousand cells. So the senior postdoctoral researcher in the lab who did this work, Boris Calderon, had to develop some sophisticated cellular assays to pick them up," explained Unanue.
Calderon, M.D., found indications that the cells were carrying granules of insulin and pieces of proteins from beta cells on their cell surfaces. He later exposed the dendritic cells to lymphocytes taken from diabetic mice. The lymphocytes were activated by the dendritic cells of the islets and switched into attack mode.
In a separate line of research, Unanue's lab has learned that dendritic cells in the pancreas may normally have beneficial effects on the health of beta cells. They've shown that when dendritic cells are absent from the pancreas, the beta cells are smaller, an indication that they're not as healthy.
The results of the study are reported online in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Source-ANI
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