(May 27, 2009) Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has type 1 diabetes, calling attention to the disease in the past few days. George Eisenbarth, however, has been paying attention for nearly 40 years.

A pioneer in diabetes research, Eisenbarth has earned the American Diabetes Association’s most prestigious prize, the Banting Award.

Every 20 years in the Western world, the rate of type 1 diabetes doubles. Nobody knows why, for sure, but Eisenbarth, executive director of the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes and professor of pediatrics, medicine and immunology at the School of Medicine, aims to find out.

“In poor countries, that doesn’t happen,” Eisenbarth says. The reasons for the spiraling rate of type 1 diabetes remain unclear, he explains. It could be diet. But it could be that developed countries have actually become “too clean,” not getting exposed to enough microorganisms that stimulate the immune systems. Ironically, we might not be dirty enough.

Eisenbarth has proved that type 1 diabetes is a chronic immune disease that can be predicted by genes specific to the immune system and the presence of certain antibodies.

In nominating Eisenbarth for the ADA’s Banting Award, a series of physicians and researchers from across the country called his body of research transformative in a field that affects millions of children and adults.

May 27, the leading British medical journal, Lancet, reported on a large study in Europe that showed the rate of diabetes doubling in some European countries even faster than previously predicted. Between 2005 and 2020, new cases of type 1 diabetes in European children younger than 5 years are expected to double. The prevalence of diabetes cases in those younger than 15 years will increase by 70 percent, Lancet reported. In a comment accompanying the Lancet article, Dana Dabelea, MD, PhD, an epidemiologist at UC Denver’s Colorado School of Public Health, explained that younger age at onset of type 1 diabetes typically means patients arrive with more serious symptoms, including an increased risk of potentially deadly diabetic ketoacidosis and the need for hospitalization.

All of this adds to the importance of Eisenbarth’s work. His Banting Award nominators praised the 61-year-old physician researcher for his willingness to collaborate as well as innovation during the course of his career.

In announcing Eisenbarth as the Banting Award winner, the American Diabetes Association noted that “the major tenets developed as a consequence of his discoveries guide basic research, clinical diagnosis and disease therapy to this day.”