Methyldopa: Consumption of this medicine will prevent Type 1 Diabetes

Washington, February 19: Diabetes is a hard hitting disease and the consequences are even harder. There are millions of people diagnosed with diabetes and there are some who are undiagnosed. Getting accustomed to Type 2 of diabetes is very crucial thus there is a hope to sustain this disease under Type 1 of its first stage. There's new hope for stopping Type 1 diabetes in its tracks after researchers discovered an existing drug can prevent the condition from developing and the same techniques used here could also be applied to other diseases.

 

The drug in question is methyldopa, currently on the World Health Organisation's list of essential drugs having been used for more than 50 years to treat high blood pressure in pregnant women and children. After undergoing certain drug analysis through a supercomputer, the teams of researchers were able to pinpoint methyldopa as a drug that was capable to block the DQ8 molecule. The antigen is found in a proportion of the population and has been implemented in auto immune responses.

It appears in some 60% of people at risk from developing Type 1 diabetes. Based on the calculations, the scientists found that methyldopa not only blocked the binding of DQ8 but didn't harm the immune functions of other cells, which is often the case with drugs that interfere with the body's immune system.

While undergoing testy, it was seen that this drug could not completely detain the disease but can delay or even limit the Type 1 stage which mostly begins at an early age.

Whereas in Type 2 diabetes, the body can't process the insulin it does make properly. Methyldopa is far from the first drug to show benefits in treating health issues other than the ones it was first designed for, but we now have better ways to spot these extra powers: this idea of identifying certain molecules and then applying modern-day computing power to find drugs that block them could work in other situations too.

This not only is limited to disease sustaining diabetes but also can be adapted to prevent autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, coeliac disease, multiple sclerosis, systemic lupus erythematous and others.