Wandering in the Background

Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1D) accounts for ~10 % of all diabetes cases, and it is caused by autoimmune destruc-tion of pancreatic beta-cells, which leads to insulin defi-ciency and fates individuals to require insulin treatment to survive. The triggering of autoimmunity against beta-cells is caused by interaction between environmental and genetic risk factors. Among the several loci asso-ciated with T1D, the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class II DR/DQ locus is the main genetic risk factor for T1D, accounting for 30-50 % of genetic risk for this dis-ease. Other genes have been associated with minor effects on T1D risk when compared with HLA, with dif-ferent studies indicating that the effect of non-HLA polymorphisms on predisposition for T1D may be dif-ferent according to HLA DR/DQ types. In this scenario, a recent study identified a minimum set of three poly-morphisms (rs3104413, rs2854275, rs9273363) which can predict high-risk HLA-DR/DQ types relevant t