Researchers at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh hope that an insulin study will help them learn if type 1 diabetes can be prevented with one pill a day.

Currently, insulin only comes through a needle. Children's is one of 150 centers worldwide that are enrolling relatives of patients with type 1 diabetes to study the effectiveness of oral insulin.
 

Caleb, an 8-year-old boy, is at Children's because his 7-year-old brother, Jabin, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 2004.

"That phone call was a little frightening too, when you hear, 'Well, his markers are the same as Jabin's,'" mother Shannon Roland said.

Those markers mean Caleb could develop the same autoimmune disease that forces his younger sibling to take daily insulin injections.

What if oral insulin capsules could remove that risk and prevent or delay the onset of type 1 diabetes?

"More power to them. If they can find something, I'm all for it," Roland said.

This new trial is being conducted to verify findings of an earlier study that suggest it's possible to delay the onset of diabetes in certain people with high levels of antibodies to insulin.

"There was a delay of at least five years," said Dr. Dorothy Becker, the principal investigator.

Caleb's immune cells threaten his pancreas' beta cells. That means they won't produce the insulin that turns glucose into energy.

Pieces of oral insulin protein, absorbed through his intestines and surrounding lymph nodes, act something like a preventive vaccine.

"The idea of these vaccines is to tickle the immune system to increase the number of regulatory T-cells and so that we get that balance back," said Becker.

People who are interested in the clinical trial can get more information by calling 412-692-5210 or going to www.diabetestrialnet.org.

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