Projects
DiaUnion
Medicon Valley Center for diabetes, autoimmunity and prevention
Establishing infrastructure for early detection of type 1 diabetes and 2 related autoimmune diseases
Background
Type 1 diabetes is an incurable autoimmune disease that strikes randomly and independently of personal lifestyle. 50,000 Swedes and 34,560 Danes are affected by type 1 diabetes [1]. The disease requires life-long, complicated treatment with insulin and places a heavy burden on the patient around the clock. Therefore, not even a third of patients reach the treatment target of 52-53 mmol/mol [2][3], resulting in debilitating complications and overmortality. The direct medical costs of type 1 diabetes amount to EUR 3-3,500 annually per patient. In addition, there is a productivity loss of EUR 5-5,500 per year per patient, bringing the total annual costs for Swedish and Danish society to EUR 640 million [4].
To reduce the burden on patients and the cost to society, research and development of therapies against type 1 diabetes must be strengthened. With early intervention, the prospect is that new drugs can delay, and in the long term completely stop, the development of the disease. Early intervention requires early detection of individuals at risk of developing type 1 diabetes. Today, no type 1 diabetes detection is carried out in Sweden and Denmark, and a global lack of screening programs constitutes a major bottleneck for early detection and the development of new therapies. Screening must be carried out by a neutral body, and the bottleneck must be alleviated by building an infrastructure for early detection of type 1 diabetes in a collaboration between the health sector, research and industry.
References
- Diabetes Associations in Sweden and Denmark
- Danish Diabetes Database. National annual report 2018/2019.
- National Swedish Diabetes Registry Annual Report 2021.
- JDRF, type 1 diabetes Fund, Health Advances. White paper. Modeling the Total Economic Value of Novel Type 1 Diabetes (type 1 diabetes) Therapeutic Concepts. 2020.
DiaUnion 2.0
From July 1 2024, DiaUnion is scaling up the program with the goal of screening 45,000 people in Denmark and southern Sweden. The purpose is to reduce the bottleneck that identification of individuals in the pre-stages of type 1 diabetes represents, for the development and employment of new therapies to delay the clinical onset of type 1 diabetes.
In parallel, the program will identify people pre-symptomatic for two related autoimmune diseases, celiac disease and autoimmune thyroid disease. The DiaUnion autoantibody screening 2.0 program is expected to find a total 7,030 aab positive individuals over the course of 3 years in Sweden and Denmark. Of these, 2,196 will be type 1 diabetes aab positive, and 1,244 will have two or more T1D aabs (stage 1+2) within the 3 years of the program.
The ambition of DiaUnion is to develop a model for establishment of permanent type 1 diabetes (and related autoimmune diseases) screening programs. DiaUnion 2.0 is a public/private partnership between Region Skåne, Region Hovedstaden, Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen, Lund University, Medicon Valley Alliance and Sanofi.
