Type 1 Diabetes and Enviromental Factors

Aims: To exploit Sweden’s exceptional systems to link the highly granular national GIS (geographic information system) and assess in detail i) the environmental variability in Type 1 diabetes (T1D) and ii) to what extent GIS factors independently contribute to risk for T1D in Sweden beyond other measured risk factors.

Methods: From GIS, we will capture data to interrogate a wide variety of environmental factors such as detailed aspects of land use (e.g. agrochemical use, ionizing radiation), climate (e.g. sunlight, temperature), hydrology, as well as multiple air quality measures, and a number of other geographically distributed risk factors.

Risk factors correlated with disease incidence will be analysed to propose potential environmental risk factors for T1DM. Proposed risk factors will be further evaluated using state of the art statistical modelling. Novelty and significance: T1D leads to major lifelong implications for affected individuals and their families.

Sweden has the second highest T1D rates in the world, with rates climbing rapidly in the last 50-years. The reasons cannot be genetic but must be environmental in large part. Our ability to link a range of national datasets in Sweden is on a par with the best in the world.

Using existing GIS and related data and linking it to the exceptional National Diabetes Registry gives us the potential to discover new environmental risk factors for T1D, leading to the potential to help prevent T1D, a major goal in medicine.