University gets $69.9 million to study potential cause of diabetes

TAMPA —Type-1 diabetes researchers at the University of South Florida will get $69.9 million over the next four years to continue studying how children develop the autoimmune disease.

The university will use the grant money from the National Institute of Health to continue looking at how genetics and environmental exposures, including infectious agents, diet and psychosocial stress, affect children with a high risk of developing diabetes.

The grant comes from the NIH’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and allows USF to support a second control study, according to a statement from the university.

“The extended project will incorporate viral biomarkers to help explain how viruses may trigger or contribute to the disease process,” USF says in the statement.

Type-1 diabetes, often called juvenile diabetes, occurs when the immune system attacks the pancreatic cells that make insulin. The exact causes are unknown.

JDRF, a global research organization, says a family history can be a factor and that viral infections could be a trigger.

The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young study — known as TEDDY — has followed 8,500 children at six centers in the U.S. and Europe from birth to age 15 “with the aim of identifying environmental factors that influence autoimmune destruction of” the cells that create insulin.

It is s the “largest multicenter prospective study of young children with genetic susceptibility to type-1 diabetes,” according to the statement.

The study has been overseen by Jeffrey Krischer, director of the Health Informatics Institute at the USF Health Morsani School of Medicine, since 2004.

Some early findings include associating maternal stress during pregnancy with a child’s genetic risk, linking early supplemental probiotics with autoimmune diabetes and identifying a potential infectious cause of diabetes.

“Our TEDDY study group has made great strides in understanding the different biological pathways by which a child may develop diabetes-related autoimmunity,” Krischer says in the statement.

Thanking the participating families, he adds, “Their resolve inspires us to accelerate our efforts to pinpoint the mechanisms of T1D, with the goal of preventing, delaying or reversing this life-altering condition.”