Asthma and Type 1 Diabetes

Asthma, Diabetes Related?
Children with type 1 diabetes are less likely to get asthma, eczema, or hayfever. And the reverse is true, that those with asthma, eczema, or hayfever are less likely to get type 1 diabetes. However, countries where diabetes is common also tend to be the countries where asthma is common, according to a report in the February 24, 2001 issue of The Lancet. One possible explanation for this is the imbalance between two types of immune cells, T-helper 1 cells and T-helper 2 cells. In children with diabetes, the balance tends to favor T-helper 1 cells; in those with asthma, T-helper 2 cells. It’s difficult for one child to have both. But some countries have conditions that may increase imbalance or inflammation in general. According to the Lancet report, the more affluent the country, the more common the imbalance.
Alan Greene MD FAAP
March 01, 2001

Asthma and Type 1 Diabetes

Reported May 6, 2002
Diabetes and Asthma
A new study shows people with asthma or other allergies may be genetically protected from type 1 diabetes.

Researchers in Finland found the risk of diabetes was inversely associated with asthma and allergies to animal dust and pollen. The immune response that leads to type 1 diabetes, which involves the destruction of insulin-producing cells, is thought to be of the Th1 type. The immune response to asthma and allergies is thought to be of the Th2 type. The reciprocal effect of these two immune responses might be the factor that protects people with asthma from developing type 1 diabetes.

More than 800 children with type 1 diabetes, as well as their siblings and a control group, were surveyed to determine if they had asthma, allergies to animal dust or pollen, or if they had an adenoidectomy performed before age 4. Children who receive early adenoidectomies have been shown to have a higher incidence of asthma later in life. Researchers of the study conclude: “The frequency of asthma and atopic symptoms to some inhaled antigens is decreased in individuals with childhood type 1 diabetes. Factors predisposing to atopic symptoms to inhaled antigens may protect form childhood type 1 diabetes.”

SOURCE: Diabetes Care, 2002;25:865-868

Asthma and Type 2 Diabetes

Asthma More Common in Diabetic People
Medically Reviewed On: November 14, 2006

HealthCentersOnline - Patients with type 2 diabetes are about 50 percent more likely than nondiabetics to have asthma, an analysis suggests.

Type 2 diabetes, by far the most common form of diabetes, impairs the body’s ability to use glucose for energy. Asthma is a chronic inflammation of the airway, or bronchial, tissues.

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine Medical Center reviewed medical records from veterans hospitals. They compared 293,124 patients with type 2 diabetes to a control group of 552,623 nondiabetics with high blood pressure. They adjusted for other factors such as smoking and heart disease.

The researchers found that 4.5 percent of the diabetic group and 2.9 percent of the control group had asthma. They suggested that physicians screen for asthma in diabetes patients with respiratory symptoms.

The study was presented last month at a conference of the American College of Chest Physicians and published online in the journal Chest.

Tiny worms may hold key for diabetes, asthma and hay fever treatment
Main Category: Allergy
Article Date: 10 Nov 2005 - 2:00 PST

Tiny worms that can trick the body’s natural defences could hold the key to new treatments for a range of conditions, including diabetes, asthma and hay fever. University of Edinburgh scientists, who have discovered that helminth parasites can exploit an ‘Achilles heel’ in our immune system, now hope to mimic the worms’ survival tactics in a bid to beat infection.

To find out how helminths fool the body’s defences, the team are focusing on the role played by so-called ‘regulatory cells’, which fulfil a policing role that protects our bodies. These cells decide when to stop the immune system from attacking the body’s own proteins (a process called autoimmunity) and also prevent it from attacking harmless environmental molecules.

It is thought that helminths produce molecules that trigger a response in regulatory cells (similar to the one that prevents autoimmunity), which tricks the body into switching off the response that would otherwise kill the parasites. If that is the case, then infections could be cured, not by vaccination or drug treatment, but by reactivating the immune system. It is the first time such a concept has been explored to curb the tropical diseases caused by helminths - such as filariasis and schistosomiasis - which affect one in four of the global population.

The study - the first findings of which are reported in the Journal of Experimental Medicine - could also help growing numbers of people in the developed world who have autoimmune conditions such as diabetes, asthma and hay fever. Again, the key is identifying the molecules that helminths produce in order to influence regulatory cell activity. If scientists can understand how these molecules trigger suppression of the immune system, they might also employ the molecules to stop the immune system from attacking the body’s own cells - which is what happens in diseases caused by over-active immune responses.

Professor Rick Maizels, of the University of Edinburgh’s School of Biological Sciences, has been awarded 1.3 million pounds by the Wellcome Trust to conduct the research. He said: “Perhaps we can borrow a trick from parasites, and employ the molecules which suppress the immune system to treat these auto-immune disorders. The project therefore offers potential for new treatments of diseases in both the developed world and the disadvantaged countries of the tropics.”

Ronald Kerr
Ronald.Kerr@ed.ac.uk
University of Edinburgh
www.ed.ac.uk

does asthma cause diabetes

DOC News January 1, 2005
© 2005 American Diabetes Association

The Obesity Virus?
RESEARCHERS SUGGEST VIRAL INFECTION MAY CAUSE OBESITY

Nick Kolakowski

Could obesity be due, at least in part, to a viral infection? The idea may seem farfetched, but then so was the idea that peptic ulcers are caused by bacterial infection.

A group of researchers have implicated the adenovirus Ad36—one of a family of about 50 viruses that cause colds, upper respiratory infections, gastrointestinal problems, and eye inflammations—in the development of obesity in humans and other animals.

At least six pathogens are suspected of causing obesity in animals, including canine distemper virus, an avian retrovirus, Borna disease virus in rats, and the scrapie agent in mice and hamsters.1

In 1992, Nihil V. Dhurandhar, PhD, then at the University of Bombay, India, reported on the avian adenovirus SMAM-1, which caused excessive intra-abdominal fat deposition and paradoxically low serum cholesterol and triglyceride levels in chickens.2 Antibodies against SMAM-1 virus were found in 10 of 52 humans with obesity screened in Bombay. Those people with antibodies had a significantly higher body weight and body mass index (BMI).3

According to Richard Atkinson, emeritus professor of medicine and nutrition at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, animals infected with the Ad36 virus have a 50% to 100% gain in body fat. When Atkinson, Dhurandhar, and colleagues screened humans for specific Ad36 antibodies, they found that around 30% of the people with obesity had the antibodies, compared with 10% of the normal-weight people.

“We can’t say that the virus caused obesity in all those people,” Atkinson says. “It’s still speculation, some say a gross speculation.” Yet the research and its implications have led him to set up the Richmond, Va.–based Obetech Obesity Research Center, where people can pay for testing to see if their extra pounds are caused by pizza or pathogen.

ONGOING RESEARCH

Because of restrictions on human testing, Atkinson, Dhurandhar—now at Wayne State University in Detroit—and colleagues have limited research to mice and monkeys. Studies show that animals inoculated with the virus gain weight even as their food intake remains the same. Research also suggests that Ad36 is transmissible from animal to animal.

“Our animal experiments showed that the virus could be passed from one infected animal to its cage-mate within 12 hours of infection,” Dhurandhar says. “Also, blood from the infected animal, injected in the veins of a fresh set of animals, transmitted the virus and obesity.”

If a virus is involved at all in the development of obesity, no one is suggesting it is the sole cause. Obesity is the result of a number of factors, some genetically based and others that are environmental.

Other researchers think that the virus isn’t much of a factor in the nation’s expanding waistlines. Cardiologist Thomas Kottke, MD, of Regions Hospital Heart Center in St. Paul, Minn., says that trying to blame the obesity epidemic on a virus is avoiding reality. “It’s like saying, `I don’t need to quit smoking because by the time I get lung cancer there’ll be a cure,’” he says. “And there’s no cure, and it kills 85% of the time.”

Instead, Kottke believes the answer to the obesity epidemic is right in front of us: people are consuming more calories than they’re using. “We don’t have to get off our butts to change the channel, the cost of food is at record lows, and there are cities all over that are impossible to walk in.”

Other doctors and researchers give the idea of an obesity virus slightly more credibility. “It is a possibility that some people might be affected by a virus,” says F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, MD, director of the Obesity Research Center at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. “You’ve got to postulate that somehow [the virus] is getting into the brain and affecting the brain centers and somehow affecting appetite.”

The possible role of Ad36 “is an interesting observation, but I would not give high priority to these problems,” says Pi-Sunyer. “I think the main cause of our obesity problem is that we eat too much.”

TESTING AND IMPLICATIONS

Atkinson thinks Obetech’s test for Ad36 antibodies will be important for people suffering from overweight or obesity. “Obese people really suffer an immense amount of discrimination, they’re told they’re lazy and that it’s a character flaw,” he says. “If it’s a virus, that puts a whole new spin on things. They’d feel a whole lot better.”

“But the more important use of this test will be for skinny people,” Atkinson continues. “If you’re skinny and your test is positive, it means you have a good chance of becoming obese due to this virus. It’s easier to prevent obesity than to change or reverse it.” Atkinson’s hope is that more people will eventually “want to know their obesity virus status.”

In the long term, the identification of a virus responsible for some incidence of obesity may lead to more clinically relevant screening tests, perhaps a vaccine or antiviral therapy, and a greater acceptance of obesity as a disease.

References

1. Dhurandhar NV: Infectobesity: obesity of infectious origin. J Nutr 131 (Suppl.):2794S –2797S, 2001.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
2. Dhurandhar NV, Kulkarni P, Ajinkya SM, Sherikar A: Effect of adenovirus infection on adiposity in chicken. Vet Microbiol 31:101–107, 1992.[Medline]

3. Dhurandhar NV, Kulkarni PR, Ajinkya SM, Sherikar AA, Atkinson RL: Association of adenovirus infection with human obesity. Obes Res 5:464–469, 1997.[Abstract]

The Obesity Virus? RESEARCHERS SUGGEST VIRAL INFECTION MAY CAUSE OBESITY