Researchers of the Nature-Based Research Group participated in the study that was published in Diabetes Care. The study is based on the fact that environmental microbial exposures have been implicated to protect against immune-mediated diseases such as type 1 diabetes. The objective was to study the association of land cover around the early-life dwelling with the development of islet autoimmunity and type 1 diabetes to evaluate the role of environmental microbial biodiversity in the pathogenesis.
Association between land cover types and the future risk of type 1 diabetes was studied by analyzing land cover types classified according to Coordination of Information on the Environment (CORINE) 2012 and 2000 data around the dwelling during the first year of life for 10,681 children genotyped for disease-associated HLA-DQ alleles and monitored from birth in the Type 1 Diabetes Prediction and Prevention (DIPP) study. Land cover was compared between children who developed type 1 diabetes (n = 271) or multiple diabetes-associated islet autoantibodies (n = 384) and children without diabetes who are negative for diabetes autoantibodies.
The results showed that agricultural land cover around the home was inversely associated with diabetes risk. The association was observed among children with the high-risk HLA genotype and among those living in the southernmost study region. Snow cover on the ground seemed to block the transfer of the microbial community indoors, leading to reduced bacterial richness and diversity indoors, which might explain the regional difference in the association. In survival models, an agricultural environment was associated with a decreased risk of multiple islet autoantibodies and a decreased risk of progression from single to multiple autoantibody positivity compared with an urban environment known to have lower environmental microbial diversity. The study suggests that exposure to an agricultural environment early in life is inversely associated with the risk of type 1 diabetes. This association may be mediated by early exposure to environmental microbial diversity.
Diabetes Care: Land Cover of Early Life Environment Modulates the Risk of Type 1 Diabetes