I have never heard of any research or connection with type 1 and those particular drugs. Truth is nobody knows for sure what causes type one in each person. The main common thread is probably having auto immune diseases in your family. And then something triggers it whether it is a specific virus is not clear, but it has been proven I think for one or two, and there can be multiple factors that can play a role.
What happens is your body starts producing large numbers of T cells which mistakenly attack your beta cells while attacking most likely a virus or something else and then eventually you have no insulin production left. So whatever causes it if we knew how to stop that attack we would have a real cure. But after many years of studying this no one has come up with anything that can stop the attack in type one or many other autoimmune syndromes.
So if those drugs made you feel ill or did something they could’ve played a role but I wouldn’t say that they caused it. I think the one thing that is known is that you have to have hereditary auto immune predisposition. So the drugs alone would not cause it imo if you don’t have the predisposition. And on the other hand whatever you felt when you were taking them could also not be related, there is no way to know really for sure.
That does not mean that anyone in your family had to have type one diabetes or any type of diabetes. It just means that some of them had any autoimmune diseases. So that if you have a virus and or other factors you can then be triggered to start the auto immune attack on the beta cells which causes type one. Stress can be a factor as well.
I did take low doses of a tricyclic drug for chronic pain for 5 years and I believe that it had an affect on my health. It affected my Gastro problems, and affected my weight, affected my whole sleeping pattern and I believe it may have triggered my Hashimoto’s or at least set up a situation for that to start happening. I also started going into early menopause around that time. I also went through what seemed like a terrible withdrawal when I stopped taking it. I lost 20 pounds at least and started having terrible upper gastro issues. That was all a long before type 1 happened for me.
There were many other factors for me closer to when it happened as well, being vegetarian and then a vegan diet especially, ebv virus reactivation, eating gluten and having ibs for many years also. I also had undiagnosed Hashimoto’s for a long time probably which my father also had.
We have a strong history of autoimmune diseases in my family with asthma, Graves’ disease, RA, Hashimoto’s and now type one and I also have eczema and others. Both my paternal uncle and now his son died from a rare form of lung cancer that I think has hereditary causes as well. Pregnancy or attempting pregnancy and hormonal changes often can cause it for many women because diabetes of all types comes on then. Type one causes early menopause which happened to me.
Unfortunately whatever caused it there is currently no way to stop the attack. I do know of one person who I met online who was in a study in Brazil. He had chemotherapy and then was given stem cells- he was a type one for probably about two years before this and he is now off insulin for several years and does not have to take anti-rejection drugs. However this is the only person I have ever encountered who has essentially been cured if you can call it that. So he would be the closest to a true cure, he still uses a dexcom to monitor is bg. I would guess for him the chemotherapy somehow stopped the autoimmune reaction.
I believe there are also people if they get some of these novel treatments very early on who have been cured or what seems like a cure in that they don’t need insulin.
I read one account of a young woman who said her sister became type one, she was in hospital, and then about a year later she didn’t need insulin anymore. That was one account that seemed totally believable to me.
It was verifiable that this person had type one and then something had somehow stopped the auto immune attack. So there could be people who are starting to get type one, maybe they never get to the point where they are diagnosed or get to a hospital or whatever and somehow their body stops the attack.
This is a little bit similar to what happens with rabies virus maybe. There is a doctor who developed a treatment which saved I believe now two young women who had rabies, two of only seven people to survive the virus worldwide once it became symptomatic in the neurosystem.
He said he believes actually that about 25% of people who are exposed to rabies fight the virus off on their own. There was some proof of this because some people in a study in an area in Peru where there are a lot of bats had rabies antibodies who had never been vaccinated and also had never gotten to the point in the virus where death would occur. So It is likely they had exposure and somehow fought the virus off on their own before it progressed.
He also said that he did not think his treatment was the only factor in their recovery. I would have to reread what he wrote about that, it was a few years ago and I don’t remember exactly what he said. What he did was to put them into an induced coma and give them antivirals which also included I believe the rabies vaccine as well as supportive treatments. I think he believes the coma slows down the progression the virus and gave them time for their body to start fighting it more.
