Hi Jan,
I posted a reply to a similar post of yours over on CWD, but I don’t think you saw it. This is pretty much the same reply.
Jan, can you explain this is a little further? As far as I know, all people with type 1 have the exact same type of T cell in circulation that attacks the beta cells. Dr. Faustman has been identifying and measuring these T cells in the blood of people with T1 for at least 5 years. This is why she collects blood samples from T1 people, as the OP has done. She has blood from controls (people who don’t have diabetes or any other autoimmune disease) for comparison.
Can you find out what your endo is referring to? The immune system is incredibly complicated and confusing to understand in detail. The T cells that actively attack the beta cells in the pancreas are the CD8 type of T cell. Faustman refers to these as the “memory” T cells when she explains the process to people.
There’s another type of T cell called a CD4, but they don’t attack the beta cells. The CD4 cells function as trainers and screeners of CD8 T cells. So, the CD4 T cells present what’s called self peptide to the CD8s to teach them not to attack the body’s own tissues. This happens at the bone marrow and thymus level. In diabetes, the CD4 T cells mess up too by allowing the bad CD8s out in circulation. But once all those CD8s are taken out by a drug treatment, like BCG, no one knows if or when or how long it might be before the CD4s allow bad CD8’s out again. So, the BCG treatment might be very long lasting in some people and need to repeated in others at intervals. No one knows and that’s what Phase II trials are all about. But from my understanding, only the CD8-type T cells actively attack the pancreas (and only a sub-population of them, since the other CD8 T cells function just fine to protect the body from disease) and all people with T1 have the same faulty T cells. In fact, NOD mice has the same exact defect in the same biochemical pathway of their CD8 cells.
Is is possible that your endo is getting autoantibodies confused with T cells? Most docs forget immunology once they’re in practice and don’t learn it at a very detailed level in school – not like a researcher in immunology.