SCIENCE BRIEFING
Times Staff and Wire Reports
Two studies published Thursday in the journals Science and Diabetologia provide evidence that common viruses may cause childhood diabetes, paving the way for potential vaccines, researchers said.
One team showed that enteroviruses, which cause colds, were found frequently in pancreases of youths who had recently died from Type 1 diabetes, but not in healthy samples.
This suggests a virus could trigger the disease in children genetically predisposed to the condition, said Alan Foulis of the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow, Scotland, who worked on one of the studies.
