Hello,

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease. Autoimmune means that our immune system is acting against our body cells. In this case, our immune system targets our pancreatic cells.

But, there is a more profound question, why do some people develop autoimmunity and others not? Or, why do immune cells destroy pancreatic cells in some people and not in others? Many things can trigger your immune cells to target your own body. One of them is genes.

People with type 1 diabetes have been shown to have specific genes or to lack specific genes. The presence or absence of these genes can contribute to autoimmunity in additive or multiplicative ways.

But the mere presence or absence of some specific genes is not always enough to produce type 1 diabetes. There are other contributors to the development of type 1 diabetes. But we strictly do not know what they are. These might be related to things in our environment, like viruses.

So, we do know that type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease, but its precipitating and aggravating factors are not entirely known. Genetics is undoubtedly one of them, but not the only one.

Read more about type 1 and type 2 diabetes