Imaging islets

Harvard Medical School researchers have noninvasively imaged pancreatic inflammation, one of the earliest signs of type 1 diabetes, and were able to distinguish between healthy controls and diabetes patients.¹ The tool could be used to provide an early diagnosis of the disease and to rapidly gauge the efficacy of therapeutics in development.

Type 1 diabetes involves an autoimmune assault on insulin-producing b cells in the pancreas. The initial immune inflammation in the pancreas, called insulitis, begins years before the emergence of overt disease and is both an early sign and pathological driver of disease...