U.S. researchers say they have identified a gene that appears to cause the more serious type of diabetes.

The team from the University of Virginia concluded that "turning off" a particular gene dramatically cut the rate of Type 1 (autoimmune) diabetes in female test mice.

Type 1 diabetics have to take insulin injections.
(CBC)

Type 1 diabetes requires insulin injections. The more common Type 2 can often be controlled with diet, pills and exercise.

The research "could pave the way for new treatments to prevent or reverse this increasingly prevalent disease," Dr. Jerry L. Nadler, head of the university's division of endocrinology and metabolism, said in a release Thursday.

The research could provide the basis for finding a drug to turn off the gene in people prone to Type 1 diabetes, microbiology professor and co-author Marcia McDuffie suggested.

The researchers removed the gene 12/15-lipoxygenase (12/15-LO) from young mice with a genetic predisposition to develop Type 1 diabetes, known as NOD (non-obese diabetic). Only 2.5 per cent of the mice that had the gene removed became diabetic.

Among the mice with the gene, typically more than 60 per cent of females and 25 per cent of males develop diabetes.

One of 40 females and none of 34 males with the gene knocked out became diabetic, the researchers reported.

The gene produces an enzyme that appears to activate white blood cells in the pancreas, the organ where insulin and other hormones and enzymes are produced. White blood cells, which normally fight infections, can cause damage in the pancreas.

The research illuminates the process that produces self-destructive white blood cells, McDuffie said.

"This knowledge may be useful in predicting which children may be at risk for developing Type 1 diabetes before significant damage has occurred," she said.

The mice that had the gene removed had better glucose tolerance than non-diabetic NOD mice. Poor glucose tolerance is a pre-diabetes condition.

The Canadian Diabetes Association website says about 10 per cent of the more than two million Canadians who have diabetes have Type 1.

The study was published by the American Diabetes Association in its online journal, Diabetes.