Screening for Type 1 Diabetes decreases ketoacidosis and preserves beta cell function
A recent paper authored by our lead Type1Screen clinicians has demonstrated clearly that screening relatives for Type 1 Diabetes decreases ketoacidosis and preserves beta cell function for those in identified in the earliest stages of T1D.
You can read the full paper here and listen to John Wentworth being interviewed about it here.
Thanks to the amazing McCaughley Family for supporting the bloodspot screening program by getting their whole family tested and sharing the experience online and via the Herald Sun.
Type1Screen has registered its 100th participant via our new online portal.
The portal was launched on July 28th 2022. Our very first registrant joined August 18th 2022.
We are really pleased and thankful for the community uptake of this initiative.
If there is type 1 diabetes in your family, and you wish to get screened for your risk of the condition, you can register here.
Anyone aged 2 years or older with a family history of type 1 diabetes, and living in Australia or New Zealand, is eligible for this free screening test.
These two siblings participated in Type1Screen because their mum has Type 1 Diabetes.
So you have a family member diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and you’ve heard about the new and easy finger prick blood spot test you can do at home. This test will help to assess your, or your child’s, risk for type 1 diabetes.
OK, it sounds easy, but can I really do it myself at home?
Dr John Wentworth will show you how in this short video.
Edward proudly showing his bandaid after his fingerprick test
Type1Screen is entering a really exciting phase.
We have just rolled out finger prick tests that families can perform at home and mail back to our lab. Our new antibody assay allows us to get a result back to families a little sooner than the standard assay based on a formal blood collection.
Early
diagnosis of type 1 diabetes is really important. It allows us to monitor
children for signs of progression and, if this occurs, to start insulin
injections in good time and prevent serious illness, which currently affects a
third of our children. Not all positive screens progress quickly and in many
cases we have time to offer opportunities to join immunotherapy prevention
studies.
We really hope that the blood spot screening test will make it much easier for families to access screening, particularly those living in regional communities.
If you would like to see just how simple it is to get screened, please contact us to receive a kit to use at home. If you want to help us spread the word about this program, please tag us online @Type1Screen.
Ultimately, we want to make screening accessible to every Australian child. Type1Screen will take us closer to this goal by demonstrating to the world that we can perform cheap and accurate screening in a timely manner and at scale.
Brave Maeve did a fingerprick test at home with help from her mum
Type1Screen is supporting the enrolment of young adults with a recent diagnosis of type 1 diabetes (T1D) to a new drug trial. This randomized, placebo-controlled, multi-centre clinical trial will evaluate the treatment of the Imotope™ IMCY-0098 and its effect on the preservation of beta-cell function in people with a recent onset T1D.
Aim
The study aims to investigate the effect of two doses of IMCY-0098 upon treatment-specific biomarkers and the effect of study medication on beta-cell function in adults with recently diagnosed type 1 diabetes.
Eligibility to take part
Aged 18 to 44 years
Diagnosed with type 1 diabetes (first insulin treatment) within 9 weeks of study screening visit.
Type1Screen receives Diabetes Australia Research (DARP) funding
We’re grateful to Diabetes Australia for a generous grant to help us bring the home testing risk screening kits over the finish line and out to families.
A. Prof John Wentworth was interviewed recently by former professional Australian rules footballer, Jack Fitzpatrick, for the Diabetes Victoria podcasts. Jack lives with type 1 diabetes himself.
The interview discussed the advancement of risk screening for type 1 diabetes and the aim to identify people in the earliest stages of the condition as possible to:
1. offer current and emerging immunotherapy trials and treatments, and
Type1Screen is working hard to accurately identify if the early markers of type 1 diabetes are present (or not) from a finger prick blood spot sample.
Many Type1Screen participants have provided both finger prick test (capillary blood) and needle in the arm (venous blood) samples. Thank you all soooooo much! These samples are helping us to validate a new test or “assay” to accurately determine someone’s risk of type 1 diabetes.
We are still in the process of validating the finger prick assay. This means that we are testing to make sure that the assay reliably finds early markers of type 1 diabetes (islet auto-antibodies – IAs) if there are any IAs in the blood. Equally, we want to make sure that the test does not find IAs when there are no antibodies present in the blood.
The finger prick assay is more complex than the regular assay that uses a venous blood sample. A spot of blood is put on a card, but the sample tends to degrade (breakdown) a little in the post. This makes it more difficult to extract any antibodies from the sample to do the test.
Our recent results comparing both methods tell us that might will miss some children who actually do have islet autoantibodies using the blood spot sample method. We are working hard to make the assay more reliable.
The aim is to be ready to launch the new do-it-yourself in the home assay in 2022. Stay tuned!
Type 1 diabetes risk can now be determined with a single blood test
Members of the Australian Type1Screen and International TrialNet Teams have been able to demonstrate that the risk of disease progression can be accurately determined with just a single blood draw. This is in contrast to the rather onerous five blood samples required during an OGTT (oral glucose tolerance test).
This is great news for our at-risk families making Type1Screen and other type 1 diabetes monitoring programs even simpler and more convenient.
The paper is freely downloadable by clicking on this link.
Type1Screen’s ultimate goal is to develop cheap and accurate screening for every Australian child to ensure early diagnosis, prevent hospitalisation and develop immune therapies that turn type one into type none.
We are currently working up a blood spot assay that can be collected in the home. We missed out on a grant in 2021 to progress this work and must now reach out directly to our supporters to develop this test.
Could you help us keep helping others by making a tax-deductible donation at:
You can help us play a critical role in convincing Government that universal type 1 diabetes screening both improves health and decreases health costs.
Nicole is a Phlebotomist (a person who takes blood).
We had a chat to her recently about what a blood test involves and what safety procedures pathology collection centres have in place during the pandemic.
