I find it really curious that evolution didn't get rid of such nasty condition.
Too much sugar you die, too much insulin you die.
And that affects you since birth.
How is it possible that something so deadly (that I assume is genetic) still exists?
Too much sugar you die, too much insulin you die.
And that affects you since birth.
How is it possible that something so deadly (that I assume is genetic) still exists?
If it were purely genetic, evolution would have selected against these genes long ago since T1D was a terminal disease with a life expectancy of less than a year until the discovery and development of insulin-based therapies in the 1920s.
The same propensity to develop a harmful (until my mother's generation invariably fatal) immune response attacking the body's own insulin producing cells might be an advantage to fighting off certain infections (possibly in a different genetic context or living with a different set of environmental exposures).
Functionally, it means every generation or three you lose "a" kid at age 1 or 5 or 11, that isn't too much in the way of evolutionary pressure, especially given how many kids people used to have, and how many other ways there were for them to keel.