Overview
- Published in Nature Communications, the study from Linköping University and the University of Florida profiled about 400 umbilical cord blood samples from the long‑running ABIS birth cohort.
- Inflammation- and immune-related proteins formed a pattern present at birth that later identified over 80% of children who developed type 1 diabetes, regardless of genetic risk.
- Researchers applied machine-learning prediction models across hundreds of proteins and synthesized results using UF’s HiPerGator supercomputer.
- Some proteins linked to future disease showed associations with maternal exposure to PFAS during pregnancy, an exploratory observation slated for further investigation.
- The authors emphasize the work reveals early mechanisms rather than providing an individual diagnostic, positioning cord blood as a non-invasive resource for future early-detection research.