Pediatric and Adolescent Endocrinology / Prediabetes - Are We Ready to Intervene?

Advances in the genetics and epidemiology of diabetes of autoimmune etiology (IDDM) and the findings of new biochemical and immunological markers have improved understanding of the slowly progressing prediabetic phase of this disease. Investigators have, in recent years, applied this new knowledge to identify subjects at high risk of developing IDDM. At the same time, advances in organ transplantation and related immunosuppressive and immunomodulatory drugs as well as experimental studies on animals have encouraged medical authorities to approve clinical trials using these drugs, with the aim of arresting the autoimmune destructive of pancreatic B cells. This volume contains the edited proceedings of the 8th International Beilinson Symposium on Prediabetes. It brings together outstanding researchers and clinicians to present and discuss recent developments in these fields, and to decide whether there are suffficiently reliable methods to detect those at high risk and whether the proposed immunosuppressive drugs are efficient and safe. Ethical and psychosocial aspects of screening and prevention trials are also examined.