Why does the immune system attack the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas, in the case of individuals with Type 1 Diabetes?
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One of the early things your immune system does as it’s developing is to “learn” what things it encounters are *you*. Unfortunately, this isn’t perfect, either from the very beginning or later in life, and it’ll occasionally fail to delete immune cells that target particular proteins and the like on your own cells.
The list of autoimmune diseases is unfortunately [very long](https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/autoimmune-diseases) (and that’s not anywhere near a complete list of them), but Type 1 diabetes is one of those.
The real answer is that we don’t know. But there are some clues. There is a correlation between viral infections and the onset of diabetes mellitus type I, so the theory is that the immune system is triggered by a virus and then the body somehow becomes sensitized to its own cells. Also, there is seasonal variation to the onset of DM, and it peaks in the fall, which is also the time of year when viral infections peak.
Son has T1. It was suggested that some uncommon viruses can resemble the pancreas cells, causing the body to consider them foreign well after they fought off the virus. Our son contracted hand, foot, and mouth when he was young after a kids party. He dealt with that for a week or two, and about 4-6 weeks later, he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.
Even if that was the cause, it doesn’t solve the problem. Getting something that resembles something inside some kids…isn’t something you can really gauge, measure, or prevent. Your only options are to suppress the immune system (dangerous and untargeted), supplement the body with insulin (tedious and impermanent), or figure out how to re-add the beta cells in a manner that they won’t be attacked (either retrain immune system or protect the beta cells from the immune system).
Those last items are generalizations. We don’t have a solution yet, but there’s a lot in the works and in trials. We have our fingers crossed that technology progresses enough in the coming years to at least “mitigate” the condition, if not cure it.
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