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Now, a new trial finds antiviral medications, when given soon after a child is diagnosed with type 1 diabetes (糖尿病), might help preserve those vital beta (β) cells.

Antiviral drugs could be “used alone, or as part of combination treatment, to rescue insulin (胰岛素) — producing beta cells at diagnosis of type 1 diabetes,” said a team that presented their findings at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, in Hamburg. So-called beta cells in the pancreas (胰腺) can generate insulin. But in some cases, an uncontrolled auto-immune response causes the body to attack its own beta cells, ruining a child’s capacity to produce insulin and cause type 1 diabetes. So people with type 1 diabetes rely on insulin injections to maintain healthy blood sugar levels the rest of their lives.

The researchers have been investigating the root causes of the autoimmune “malfunction” behind beta cell destruction for years, and they discovered that low-grade infections with common germs often occur in the pancreatic cells of people newly diagnosed with type l diabetes. So what if these people were given antivirals — in this case, pleconaril and ribavirin — to rid the pancreas of these infections?

The new trial, led by Dr. Mynarek, sought to answer that question. The team followed96 children aged 6 to 15 who were all diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in the study. The children were randomly selected to receive either the two antiviral medicines or a placebo (无效对照剂) for six months. Mynarek’s group tracked C-peptides levels in the blood, which “mirror the insulin production in the pancreas,” implying that the higher a child’s C-peptide levels on tests, the better their pancreas was producing insulin. According to their findings, while C-peptide levels dropped a full 24% in children who received the placebo, it fell by just 11% in those who got the antivirals. That suggests the treatment helped protect the child’s pancreatic beta cells from destruction.

The researchers concluded that “further studies should be done to evaluate whether antiviral treatment could delay the progression of beta-cell damage leading to clinical type l diabetes.”