Are there measurable abnormalities that precede development of islet autoantibodies?
With the existence of many children, both relatives and general population children, followed from birth to the development of diabetes and high throughput metabolomic and messenger RNA array assays, as well as improving T cell assays a number of investigators have reported abnormalities that may precede development of islet autoantibodies. This includes reported abnormalities of lipids, metabolites such as glutamate reported from studies in Finland, evaluation of serum effects on messenger RNA expression arrays from Wisconsin, and T cell assays evaluating LADA patients in the state of Washington (64,65,123). At present with single reports and lack of standardization and utilization of such assays by multiple groups there is not a clear consensus that specific abnormalities precede the development of islet autoantibodies. In addition Hampe and coworkers have reported the presence of anti-idiotypic antibodies that mask the presence of GAD65 autoantibodies in normal controls, with the ad
