Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis is not associated with Type-2 Diabetes Mellitus

Valentina Rosu¹ , Niyaz Ahmed² , Daniela Paccagnini¹ , Adolfo Pacifico³ , Stefania Zanetti¹ and Leonardo A Sechi¹

¹Dipartimento di Scienze Biomediche, Sezione di Microbiologia clinica e sperimentale, viale San Pietro 43 b 07100 Sassari, Italy

²Pathogen Evolution Laboratory, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad, India

³Servizio di Diabetologia, Clinica Medica Universitaria di Sassari. 07100 Sassari, Italy

author email corresponding author email

Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials 2008, 7:9doi:10.1186/1476-0711-7-9


Published:	22 April 2008

Abstract

Background

The role of pathogenic mycobacteria in diabetes has been a focus of speculation since a decade without any meaningful insights into the mechanism of diabetes causation vis a vis mycobacterial factors. Two of our studies based on PCR identification of mycobacterial DNA and detection of antibodies specific to the recombinant antigens and whole cell lysates of the Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP) shown a clear association of MAP with the presence of type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM).

Methods

In this study, we sought to investigate if or not type 2 diabetes (T2DM) patients harbour humoral responses to MAP. Using three different MAP antigen preparations, humoral antibody profiles were estimated for 57 T2DM patients and 57 healthy controls. Statistical analysis was performed with the Chi-square test with Yates' corrections.

Results

We observed insignificant levels of humoral antibodies against recombinant heparin binding haemagglutinin (HbHA), glycosyl transferase (Gsd) and MAP whole cell lysate in the blood of subjects with T2DM as compared to healthy controls.

Conclusion

We found no obvious association of MAP with the incidence of T2DM in Sardinian patients.