Quote:
Originally Posted by belyro  I'm curious to have some more people weigh in on something I heard yesterday.
My friend knows a guy who became diabetic (Type 1) a number of years ago. The odd thing is, he and 2 other guys who were both in the same university class (sounds like it was a pretty small class) all were diagnosed with Type 1 within a short period of time (I believe it was all within a number of months of one another).
I've had diabetes since I was 3, so I haven't studied diabetes onset much, but is this purely a coincidence? Three young men in the same class all Type 1 within a short amount of time seems very odd.
Thoughts? |
Yes and no.
The most reasonable hypothesis about the development of Type 1 diabetes is that it's an autoimmune response in the wake of a virus. The immune system's development of immunity to a certain kind of virus results in it mistakenly attacking the beta cells of the pancreas, and the result is type 1 diabetes.
So you end up with 3 guys in a small class who all become Type 1's within a short time of one another. It is reasonable to conjecture that they all caught the same virus and had similar autoimmune responses.
