Researchers say they may be able to predict who will develop juvenile diabetes. That's possible, they say, by measuring the presence of antibodies that attack insulin-producing cells in young children.

George Eisenbarth and scientists at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center say that four of five babies who tested positive for the antibodies before they were a year old developed type-I diabetes by the time they were three. The fifth child is only two.

Eisenbarth and colleagues screened the blood of 934 young children for anti-insulin antibodies when they were between seven and 10 months old.

Four of five children who consistently tested positive for the antibodies developed diabetes, but only one of 929 children who didn't have the antibodies did.

Juvenile diabetes is an autoimmune disease. It occurs when the pancreas produces very little insulin or none at all. The body needs insulin to use sugar for energy. Approximately 10 per cent of people with diabetes have Type I.

In the case of diabetes, the body's immune system mistakenly turns against insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.

In their report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers say their study's results were the same as one done on mice bred to develop diabetes.