The Causes of Type 1 Diabetes

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the immune system will attack and kill the pancreatic beta cells and as a result there will be lack of insulin. Type 1 diabetes usually occurs to the adolescences and they have to supply insulin to maintain normal life.

Though it is more common among children and adolescences, it can affect any age and it accounts for about 10% of all diabetes cases. At present it has been known that there are some reasons that can cause type 1 diabetes.

1. Disorders in the immune system. There are many antibodies in the blood of type 1 diabetes patients such as gad antibody, ica antibody, etc. These abnormal antibodies can damage the pancreatic beta cells and affect the normal secretion of insulin.

2. Hereditary factors. Researches have found that the hereditary defect is the pathological basis for type 1 diabetes and it has the feature of familial congregation. For example, those having parents have diabetes are more susceptible to get it than those that have no family history of the disease.

3. Virus infections might be the inducing factor of type 1 diabetes. Many scientists suspect that virus infections might be the cause of diabetes. This is because type 1 diabetes patients usually have virus infections before developping diabetes and there are many viruses that play certain role in type 1 diabetes.

4. Others. There are some other factors that can cause diabetes such as milk. Of cause this may not apply to every diabetes case and wheather they are the causes are still being studied.

Those type 1 diabets is not common as type 2 diabetes, it is more severe than type 2 and has relativly worse prognosis. And studies and researches on effective treatments for type 1 diabetes are of significent medical value both for type 1 diabetes but also for type 2 diabetes.