Viral Infections and Diabetes Mellitus

Abstract

Type-1-diabetes (T1D) is known to be caused by progressive destruction of pancreatic B-cells, genetic factors are believed to play a major role in the disease development, however, environmental factors are also implicated in the pathogenesis, viruses are one of these factors, as well as triggering beta-cells specific autoimmunity, viruses may cause diabetes by directly infecting and destroying beta-cells, 14 different viruses have been reported to be associated with the development of T1D. In this work, the relationship between (T1D) and seropositivity to three viruses (CMV, EBV and HCV) have been studied, the sera of 54 T1D patients and controls under the age of 30 from both sexes have been investigate for the presence of IgG antibodies against CMV, EBV and total anti-HCV antibodies (Abs). Results revealed that 94.4% of the T1D patients were infected with CMV, 61.1% were infected with EBV and 35.1% were infected with HCV. While among the control group it was found that 77% were infected with CMV comparing to 92.5% and 3.7% were infected with EBV and HCV, respectively. Out of the 54 diabetics 8 (14.8%) found to be infected with the three viruses while none of the controls found to have such seropositivity. From those results it may be concluded that neither the CMV nor the EBV has a relation with T1D while the infection with HCV may be contributed to T1D since there is a significant difference (p<0.001) between the number of T1D patients and number of controls who have anti-HCV Abs.