In the news

The American Diabetes Association and the University of Florida have teamed up to launch a screening programme that will eventually be rolled out to see all newborn infants in the US state of Florida offered testing for genetic susceptibility to Type 1 diabetes. Babies who test positive in the voluntary programme will be monitored in subsequent years for the appearance of autoantibodies that indicate the first signs of disease. The hope is that screening will enable at least some children who develop Type 1diabetes to be identified at a very early stage, and that early treatment might prevent some of the most severe effects of the disease such as blindness, kidney failure and neurological damage. Eventually, some preventive measures may become possible, and the information obtained from the screening and monitoring programme may give some clues to the factors that translate a genetic susceptibility into the development of disease. The scheme has been piloted at four Florida hospitals over the last four years, with the result that more than 9000 children have been identified as "at risk" and enrolled for monitoring. The press release announcing the expansion of the screening programme does not specify what genetic variants are tested for or give any information about the sensitivity, specificity, or positive or negative predictive value of the test.