26/11/2025
🚼 Can early oral daily insulin prevent ? New results from the POInT trial 🧬
Researchers screened 241,000+ newborns across Europe to find babies at high genetic risk for . Over 1,000 babies were enrolled and given either daily high-dose oral insulin or placebo from infancy to age 3 years.
🔍 What did they find?
The treatment was safe, but did not prevent the development of islet autoantibodies, the early markers of .
⚡ However, genetics mattered:
Infants with certain genes showed potential protection, while those with other genes did not benefit—and in some cases had increased risk. This suggests future prevention strategies may need to be targeted rather than one-size-fits-all.
💡 Why it matters:
POInT is one of the largest primary-prevention trials for type 1 diabetes ever conducted. While oral insulin alone didn’t prevent autoimmunity, the findings open the door to personalised prevention based on genetics.
🔬 Bottom line:
High-dose oral insulin is not the answer—but it offers another piece of the puzzle in understanding how type 1 diabetes might be prevented in the future.
Access the open access paper online at https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(25)01726-X