skralyx on Daily Kos summarizes some medical research news concerning one of my two primary illnesses, diabetes:
It seems that a common bacterium found in the human gut makes a protein that looks just enough like insulin to cause the immune system to attack not only this bacterium, but indeed to attack insulin and the pancreas itself. This process could very well be one of the main triggers of Type 1 diabetes, and knowing this would substantially change the way we think about this disease. And it all may be just a crazy accident of nature.
I’m Type II, not Type I, but I’ve been theorizing, from the perspective of a software engineer with 40 years experience analyzing partially understood complex systems, that researchers who came up with the Type II definition of diabetes were operating with defective (or incomplete, if you prefer) information. My suspicion, based on responses to questions I’ve asked, my observations of how human system analysts react to defective information and the pressure to produce results, and the vague explanations of Type II – cells fail to respond to insulin properly, really? All of them? – that the final explanation may turn out to be far simpler: an over representation of certain types of bacteria in the gut overproduce glucose, leading to hyperglycemia, since we know that the pancreas can only produce so much insulin.
But, like I said, I’m just a software engineer. I don’t even play a doctor on TV, as the old disclaimer goes.
But this article on Type I gives me hope that Type II will have a similar explanation, and that a targeted dose of antibiotics, and, in the case of Type I, a reset of the immune system results in a cure. Then we won’t have to worry about pharma companies raising prices on insulin any longer.
