Rotavirus infections and development of diabetes-associated autoantibodies during the first 2 years of life

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Abstract
Rotavirus, the most common cause of childhood gastroenteritis, has been implicated as one of the viral triggers of diabetes‐associated autoimmunity. To study the possible association between rotavirus infections and the development of diabetes‐associated autoantibodies, we measured the prevalence of rotavirus antibodies in serum samples collected at 3–6‐month intervals up to the age of 2 years from 177 children selected from consecutive newborns because they carried HLA‐DQB1 alleles associated with increased risk for type 1 diabetes. Twenty‐nine of the children developed at least two of four diabetes‐associated autoantibodies (ICA, IAA, GADA or IA‐2A) during the first 2 years of life (the cases), whereas 148 children remained autoantibody‐negative matched with the cases for date of birth, gender, living region and HLA‐DQB1 alleles. The temporal association between the development of the first‐appearing diabetes‐associated autoantibody and rotavirus infections was studied by analysing whether the cases had a diagnostic increase in rotavirus antibody titre more often during the 6‐month period that preceded seroconversion to autoantibody positivity than the controls. By the age of 12 months one of the 13 case children (7%), who had a serum sample drawn at that age and who had developed at least one type of diabetes‐associated autoantibodies, had experienced a rotavirus infection, while 12 of the 61 (20%) autoantibody‐negative control children had had a rotavirus infection. By 18 months, four of the 22 autoantibody‐positive cases (18%) and 18 of the 89 controls (20%) had rotavirus antibodies, and by the age of 24 months the respective numbers were five of the 27 cases (19%) and 32 of the 113 (28%) controls. A rotavirus infection occurred during the 6 months preceding the sample which was positive for an autoantibody in four of the 25 periods (16%) for which both necessary samples were available, while the controls had a rotavirus infection during 55 of the 370‐such periods (15%). Accordingly, our data suggest that rotavirus infections are unlikely triggers of beta‐cell autoimmunity in young children with genetic susceptibility to type 1 diabetes.