Probiotics administered via formula to infants may reduce a child's chance of developing Type 1 diabetes later in life, suggests a new study published this month in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
According to The Tampa Tribune, University of South Florida researcher Ulla Uusitalo and colleagues found that infants born to families with a history of diabetes are 60 percent less likely to develop islet autoimmunity, a precursor to Type 1 diabetes, if given formula that contains probiotics in the first 27 days of their life.
"One question that has always lingered is why, in some people with similar or identical genetic makeups, like twins, one will get a disease and one will not," said Dr. Ed Funai, chief operating officer for USF Health. "This plays into an idea called epigenetics that says our genes interact with our environment and get turned on and off based on our exposures and other factors."
"What’s so fascinating about this is there has been a lot of research lately on the influence of the bacterial population in the gastrointestinal tract on things like obesity, and this is another piece of evidence to show that bacteria living in our bodies could have an impact on our overall health."
The data for the study came from the diet and blood samples of 7,473 children at high-risk for Type 1 diabetes ages 4 to 10 in Colorado, Georgia, Florida, Germany, Finland, and Sweden. Researchers hope to continue the study until the children reach age 15.
Of those sampled, American and Swedish children were found to have fewer probiotics in their diets than those from Finland and Germany.
Last year, the CDC said that 5 percent of the 29.1 million people in the U.S. with diabetes had Type 1 diabetes.
Probiotics, microorganisms found naturally in foods like yogurt, pickles, and sauerkraut, and are available in various forms, such as supplements, formulas, etc.
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