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Aims/hypothesis Respiratory infections and onset of islet autoimmunity are reported to correlate positively in two small prospective studies. The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young (TEDDY) study is the largest prospective international cohort study on the environmental determinants of type 1 diabetes that regularly monitors both clinical infections and islet autoantibodies. The aim was to confirm the influence of reported respiratory infections and to further characterise the temporal relationship with autoantibody seroconversion. Methods During the years 2004–2009, 8676 newborn babies with HLA genotypes conferring an increased risk of type 1 diabetes were enrolled at 3 months of age to participate in a 15 year follow-up. In the present study, the association between parent-reported respiratory infections and islet autoantibodies at 3 month intervals up to 4 years of age was evaluated in 7869 children. Time-dependent proportional hazard models were used to assess how the timing of respiratory infections related to persistent confirmed islet autoimmunity, defined as autoantibody positivity against insulin, GAD and/or insulinoma antigen-2, concordant at two reference laboratories on two or more consecutive visits. Results In total, 87,327 parent-reported respiratory infectious episodes were recorded while the children were under study surveillance for islet autoimmunity, and 454 children seroconverted. The number of respiratory infections occurring in a 9 month period was associated with the subsequent risk of autoimmunity (p < 0.001). For each 1/year rate increase in infections, the hazard of islet autoimmunity increased by 5.6% (95% CI 2.5%, 8.8%). The risk association was linked primarily to infections occurring in the winter (HR 1.42 [95% CI 1.16, 1.74]; p < 0.001). The types of respiratory infection independently associated with autoimmunity were common cold, influenza-like illness, sinusitis, and laryngitis/tracheitis, with HRs (95% CI) of 1.38 (1.11, 1.71), 2.37 (1.35, 4.15), 2.63 (1.22, 5.67) and 1.76 (1.04, 2.98), respectively. Conclusions/interpretation Recent respiratory infections in young children correlate with an increased risk of islet autoimmunity in the TEDDY study. Further studies to identify the potential causative viruses with pathogen-specific assays should focus especially on the 9 month time window leading to autoantibody seroconversion.

Early systemic treatment of nonobese diabetic mice with high doses of recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) vector expressing murine IL-10 prevents type 1 diabetes. To determine the therapeutic parameters and immunological mechanisms underlying this observation, female nonobese diabetic mice at 4, 8, and 12 wk of age were given a single i.m. injection of rAAV-murine IL-10 (104, 106, 108, and 109 infectious units (IU)), rAAV-vector expressing truncated murine IL-10 fragment (109 IU), or saline. Transduction with rAAV-IL-10 at 109 IU completely prevented diabetes in all animals injected at all time points, including, surprisingly, 12-wk-old animals. Treatment with 108 IU provided no protection in the 12-wk-old injected mice, partial prevention in 8-wk-old mice, and full protection in all animals injected at 4 wk of age. All other treatment groups developed diabetes at a similar rate. The rAAV-IL-10 therapy attenuated pancreatic insulitis, decreased MHC II expression on CD11b+ cells, increased the population of CD11b+ cells, and modulated insulin autoantibody production. Interestingly, rAAV-IL-10 therapy dramatically increased the percentage of CD4+CD25+ regulatory T cells. Adoptive transfer studies suggest that rAAV-IL-10 treatment alters the capacity of splenocytes to impart type 1 diabetes in recipient animals. This study indicates the potential for immunomodulatory gene therapy to prevent autoimmune diseases, including type 1 diabetes, and implicates IL-10 as a molecule capable of increasing the percentages of regulatory cells in vivo.

Leucine, a the branched-chain amino acids that must be supplied in daily diet, plays an important role in controlling protein synthesis and regulating cell metabolism in various cell types. In pancreatic β cells, leucine acutely stimulates insulin secretion by serving as both metabolic fuel and allosteric activator of glutamate dehydrogenase to enhance glutaminolysis. Leucine has also been shown to regulate gene transcription and protein synthesis in pancreatic islet β cells via both mTOR-dependent and -independent pathways at physiological concentrations. Long-term treatment of leucine has been shown to improve insulin secretory dysfunction of human diabetic islets via upregulation of certain key metabolic genes. In vivo, leucine administration improves glycemic control in humans and rodents with type 2 diabetes. This review aims to summarize and discuss the recent findings regarding the effects of leucine metabolism on pancreatic β cell function.

Pancreatic-derived factor (PANDER) is an islet-specific cytokine present in both pancreatic ␣-and ␤-cells, which, in vitro, induces ␤-cell apoptosis of primary islet and cell lines. In this study, we investigated whether PANDER is secreted by pancreatic ␣-and ␤-cells and whether PANDER secretion is regulated by glucose and other insulin secretagogues. In mouse-derived insulin-secreting ␤-TC3 cells, PANDER secretion in the presence of stimulatory concentrations of glucose was 2.8 ؎ 0.4-fold higher (P < 0.05) than without glucose. Insulin secretion was similarly increased by glucose in the same cells. The total concentration of secreted PANDER in the medium was ϳ6 -10 ng/ml [IFN]-␥) play vital roles in ␤-cell dysfunction and death and in the development of type 1 diabetes (2-6). Recently, it was shown that glucose causes islet ␤-cells to produce IL-1␤, while the released IL-1␤ has a deleterious effect on human pancreatic islets (7,8). These studies suggest that production and release of cytokines from pancreatic islet cells are involved in ␤-cell dysfunction and death in hyperglycemia. To date, although several cytokines have been shown to be involved in ␤-cell dysfunction and death, the precise mechanisms of type 1 diabetes are still incompletely understood, suggesting that other potential factors may be involved.Pancreatic-derived factor (PANDER), also known as FAM3B (9,10), is one of four members of a new cytokine family recently identified using the algorithm ostensible recognition of folds (11) while searching for novel cytokines based on their predicted secondary structure. The rationale for this approach is that the secondary structure of cytokines is highly conserved through evolution. Many cytokines, such as IL

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Aims: The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young (TEDDY) planned biomarker discovery studies on longitudinal samples for persistent confirmed islet cell autoantibodies and type 1 diabetes (T1D) using dietary biomarkers, metabolomics, microbiome/viral metagenomics and gene expression. Methods: This paper describes the details of planning the TEDDY biomarker discovery studies using a nested case-control design that was chosen as an alternative to the full cohort analysis. In the frame of a nested case-control design, it guides the choice of matching factors, selection of controls, preparation of external quality control samples, and reduction of batch effects along with proper sample allocation. Results and Conclusion: Our design is to reduce potential bias and retain study power while reduce the costs by limiting the numbers of samples requiring laboratory analyses. It also covers two primary end points (the occurrence of diabetes-related autoantibodies and the diagnosis of T1D). The resulting list of case-control matched samples for each laboratory was augmented with external quality control (QC) samples.

OBJECTIVEPancreatic-derived factor (PANDER, FAM3B) is a pancreatic islet-specific cytokine-like protein that is secreted from β-cells upon glucose stimulation. The biological function of PANDER is unknown, and to address this we generated and characterized a PANDER knockout mouse.RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODSTo generate the PANDER knockout mouse, the PANDER gene was disrupted and its expression was inhibited by homologous recombination via replacement of the first two exons, secretion signal peptide and transcriptional start site, with the neomycin gene. PANDER−/− mice were then phenotyped by a number of in vitro and in vivo tests to evaluate potential effects on glucose regulation, insulin sensitivity, and β-cell morphology and function.RESULTSGlucose tolerance tests demonstrated significantly higher blood glucose levels in PANDER−/− versus wild-type male mice. To identify the mechanism of the glucose intolerance, insulin sensitivity and pancreatic β-cell function were examined. Hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamps and insulin tolerance testing showed similar insulin sensitivity for both the PANDER−/− and wild-type mice. The in vivo insulin response following intraperitoneal glucose injection surprisingly produced significantly higher insulin levels in the PANDER−/− mice, whereas insulin release was blunted with arginine administration. Islet perifusion and calcium imaging studies showed abnormal responses of the PANDER−/− islets to glucose stimulation. In contrast, neither islet architecture nor insulin content was impacted by the loss of PANDER. Interestingly, the elevated insulin levels identified in vivo were attributed to decreased hepatic insulin clearance in the PANDER−/− islets. Taken together, these results demonstrated decreased pancreatic β-cell function in the PANDER−/− mouse.CONCLUSIONSThese results support a potential role of PANDER in the pancreatic β-cell for regulation or facilitation of insulin secretion.