Dissecting a multifactorial disease Written in our genes Dissecting a multifactorial disease Professor John Todd and colleagues are searching for the genes that contribute to type 1 diabetes. If studies of type 1 diabetes do nothing else, they dispel the myth of genetic determinism. The work of Professor John Todd and colleagues at the University of Cambridge Department of Medical Genetics has helped identify a number of variations polymorphisms in genes that contribute to the disease. But Professor Todd says that in type 1 diabetes, as in other common multifactorial diseases, Nothing is all or none. Everything is based round risk.
Nothing really has any certainty.
So far, two type 1 diabetes genes relevant to disease have been precisely characterized. That leaves many others and a host of environmental factors still to explore. Type 1 diabetes accounts for about a tenth of all cases of diabetes and is the most serious form of the disease. In type 1 diabetic patients, production of insulin is severely reduced following a destructive autoimmune response that annihilates the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. The body s own immune response is directed against a number of beta-cell proteins, notably insulin itself, the insulin precursor preproinsulin, and an enzyme called glutamic acid decarboxylase.