Current Views on the Etiology of Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus

Abstract

THE pathogenesis of diabetes mellitus has long been an enigma. Because of its familial pattern of transmission and the subtle chronicity of the disease, diabetes has been considered a degenerative process having a genetic basis. Since degeneration means little from the perspective of etiology, and because numerous attempts at genetic analysis have failed to define a pattern of inheritance, much of what is known about the disease is descriptive.During the past decade, concepts of diabetes mellitus have been in a state of evolution as new biologic characteristics of the disease have come to light. Most workers in the field . . .