Patrick Antkowiak1,
Brian Stevens1, Marcia McDuffie1, Frederick H. Epstein1
1University
of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, United States
In type 1 diabetes mellitus, immune cells invade the pancreas and destroy the insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells. The early detection of immune infiltration may represent a window for a therapeutic intervention. Currently, there are no ideal, widely clinically-useable methods to detect this infiltration. We hypothesized that the infiltrating cells would occupy and reduce the pancreatic extracellular volume in a mouse model of diabetes. We measured the pancreatic extracellular volume in mice, using the conventional contrast agent Gd-DTPA, and found that it decreased over time in a model of diabetes but remained unchanged in normal mice.