In Australia, the decline in the number of young children with type 1 diabetes may be associated with the introduction of rotavirus vaccination.
Those are amazing data who come to us from Australia. There, researchers believe that the decline in the number of young children with type 1 diabetes may be associated with the introduction of routine infant rotavirus vaccination.
The rotavirus vaccine is given to Australian infants aged 2 and 4 months to protect them against a severe and life-threatening form of diarrhoea.
This is the first time the rate of type 1 diabetes has fallen
Scientists first tracked the number of children diagnosed with type 1 diabetes between the years 2000 and 2015. They then found that the number of cases of type 1 diabetes diagnosed in children aged 0 at 4 years old had decreased compared to 2007, when the rotavirus vaccine was systematically introduced for babies.
This finding builds on previous research suggesting that developing rotavirus infection may be a risk factor for type 1 diabetes. This is the first time the rate of type 1 diabetes has fallen since the 1980s among young children in Australia.
A serious autoimmune disease
It has been 40 years since the incidence of type 1 diabetes has steadily increased in Australia and around the world, but the reasons for this increase are poorly understood. Type 1 diabetes is a serious lifelong autoimmune disease. The immune system there destroys the cells of the pancreas which produce insulin, a hormone controlling the level of glucose in the blood.
“The significant decrease in type 1 diabetes that we detected in young children after 2007 was not observed in older children aged 5 to 14. This suggests that young children could have been exposed to a factor of protection that had no impact on older children,” said study leader Dr Perrett.
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