Insulin

For a family in a developing country, having a child diagnosed with diabetes can bring an overwhelming financial burden, and often ends in heartbreak. The IDF Child Sponsorship Programme, Life for a child with diabetes was established to help meet the medical needs of children with diabetes in developing countries, their families, and those who care for them. The Programme provides support to children's diabetes centres in developing countries, so that best practice care for that country can be provided to children from even the poorest situations.

People develop Type 1 diabetes when their immune system specifically seeks out and destroys the insulin-producing ß-cells in their pancreas. The interaction of environmental factors with a number of gene variants results in the immune disturbance which causes the condition. In this article, Tony Merriman looks at the approaches used to identify the genes which make a person susceptible to Type 1 diabetes.