The anti-inflammatory IL-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1ra) protects against the development of islet autoimmunity.

Through gene expression profiling in cultured lymphocytes and PBMCs from a large set of T1D patients and controls, we demonstrate that IL-1ra may protect against the development of islet autoimmunity and T1D through down-regulating a large number of inflammatory genes and pathways. Keywords: autoimmunity; IL-1Ra;Type 1 diabetes (T1D) To elucidate the molecular mechanism underlying the action of IL-1ra, we profiled gene expression in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) cultured with sera from low or high IL-1ra subjects. To avoid potential heterogeneity in responder cells from different subjects, PBMCs from one healthy donor were cultured for six hours with 20% of sera from six subjects with low IL-1ra and six subjects with high IL-1ra. Gene expression in the cultured cells was analyzed with the Illumina HumanRef-8 v3.0 beadchips