Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Kids has announced some major progress in the fight against Type 1 diabetes.It has always been believed that diabetes is caused when insulin-producing cells in the pancreas are destroyed by what scientists thought were abnormalities of the immune system.

This new research at the Hospital for Sick Kids however, has found a connection between nerve endings and their regulation of the pancreas in mice.  This discovery means that diabetes may in fact be a disease of the nervous system  and not the auto immune system.

This new knowledge could lead to entirely new ways to thinking about the epidemiology and treatment of the disease. Disocvery of the new trigger has allowed researchers to actually reverse the disease in lab mice according to the medical journal, Cell.

The next phase of the research is to find out if the same nerve ending connection to pancreatic performance exists in humans.

More than 200,000 Canadians are affected by Type 1 diabetes.  Most who get it are children or young teenagers.