How the Immune System Targets Beta Cells

Your immune system is like a security team. It looks for germs and stops them. Usually, it can tell your own cells from invaders.

In type 1, that ability goes wrong. This is called an autoimmune condition. It means your immune system attacks your own body tissue.

What starts this attack is not fully known.

A close-up of the pancreas shows six round beta cells giving off small insulin dots. Immune cells move in between them and ring four of them, then those four are gone and little insulin is left. Last, an insulin pen gives insulin from outside the body.

The pancreas sits behind your stomach. Inside it are beta cells, among other cells.

They make insulin, a hormone that helps sugar from food get into your cells.

The immune system attacks these beta cells. It destroys them slowly, over months to years. Think of a factory losing its workers, one at a time. As beta cells are lost, the body makes less and less insulin.

A blood test can look for autoantibodies. Think of them as footprints. The immune system leaves them behind when it aims at your own cells by mistake.

Finding them can show the attack is under way. They can show up in the blood years before symptoms start.

Key takeaways

• In type 1, the immune system wrongly attacks the body's own tissue.
• The attack targets beta cells, so the pancreas makes less and less insulin.
• Autoantibodies in a blood test can show that the attack is under way.

Try it

Write the word autoantibody on a card, and beside it one sentence on what it can show.