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Pet hamster in the home during pregnancy may contribute to type 1 diabetes risk in offspring
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Mothers who reported keeping a pet hamster in the home during pregnancy were more likely to have offspring that developed type 1 diabetes in childhood vs. mothers who did not have a hamster in the home during pregnancy, according to a birth cohort analysis published in Pediatric Diabetes.
“The large birth cohort study All Babies in Southeast Sweden, or ABIS, was designed to find environmental factors contributing to the development of type 1 diabetes,” Johnny Ludvigsson, MD, PhD, senior professor of pediatrics at Crown Princess Victoria Children´s Hospital, Linköping University Hospital and the division of pediatrics at Linköping University, Sweden, told Endocrine Today. “Virus has been one of the common suspected etiologies, and virus could be transferred via pets. The destructive process starts very early in life. That is why we asked such questions about pets during pregnancy in our prospective questionnaire and analyzed if we could find any association between pets during pregnancy and later development of type 1 diabetes.”
In addition to enterovirus, Ljungan virus, a virus within the Picornaviridae family, has been suspected to play a role in the development of autoimmune diabetes in animals and is hosted in rodents, Ludvigsson and Ashild Olsen Faresjö, PhD, associate professor in the department of medicine and health at Linköping University, Sweden, wrote in the study background. Additionally, human parechovirus has been observed to be associated with the development of islet autoantibodies in two studies, the researchers wrote. Ljungan virus has also been identified in several species of voles, lemmings and the yellow-neck mouse, a hamster relative.
Ludvigsson and Faresjö analyzed data from 16,384 mothers participating in ABIS between October 1998 and October 1999. Mothers responded to a questionnaire within 3 days after birth that included information about exposure to pets. The ABIS registry was linked to national diagnosis and drug registries to assess how many children went on to develop type 1 diabetes. Researchers used Pearson’s chi-square tests to assess differences in the proportion of children exposed to pets during pregnancy who developed type 1 diabetes vs. those who had pets but did not develop the disease.
Within the cohort, 45.5% of mothers reported having a pet in the home during pregnancy, with the most common being cats (25%) and dogs (18.7%), whereas 0.9% reported owning a pet hamster. Among mothers who reported owning cats, dogs or hamsters, 1.1%, 1.01% and 0.03% of offspring were diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, respectively.
Researchers observed no association between having a cat or dog in the home during pregnancy and type 1 diabetes risk in offspring; however, exposure to hamsters during pregnancy was associated with a fourfold increased risk for offspring developing type 1 diabetes (OR = 4.21; 95% CI, 1.7-10.42). Results persisted after adjustment for other possible risk factors, including family history of the disease, owning other pets and jaundice at birth (P = .005). There were no observed associations between owning a pet hamster and psychosocial factors or psychosocial vulnerability, according to the researchers.
The researchers noted that only a small minority of mothers whose children later developed type 1 diabetes had a pet hamster during pregnancy, and this factor cannot be regarded as a common causal factor.
“Exposure to virus during pregnancy, transferred via hamster, may be one possible risk factor contributing to type 1 diabetes in the offspring/child,” Ludvigsson said. “This is not a common cause but might, rarely, be one among several possible mechanisms.” – by Regina Schaffer
For more information:
Johnny Ludvigsson, MD, PhD, can be reached at Linköping University, Division of Pediatrics, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Medical Faculty, SE 58185 Linköping, Sweden; email: Johnny.Ludvigsson@liu.se.
Disclosures: The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.
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