Vaccine 'promises cure for diabetes'

A cure for diabetes could be in sight after scientists confirmed they are to test a vaccine against the most serious form of the condition.

British medics will test the vaccine on 18 patients with type 1 diabetes, which affects 300,000 people in Britain and carries the risk of blindness, loss of limbs and death.

It is said to mark the most significant advance since insulin by prescription arrived in the 1920s. Diabetes is believed to result from a genetic predisposition triggered by an unknown environmental factor that causes the immune system to attack its own tissues.

But now scientists at King's College, London and Bristol University, are using a protein to stop the body destroying vital insulin-producing cells.

They found they could successfully inoculate mice for the rest of their lives by injecting them with the protein. Bristol University consultant senior lecturer in medicine Colin Dayan said he hoped the vaccine have the same effect on humans.