At the age of seven, my son was given an adult dose of a Hepatitis A vaccine. In turn, he began having symptoms of diabetes 36 hours after the shot. Some say that his own immune system overreacted to fight off the virus and also attacked his T cells and beta cells causing him to get diabetes. No one on either side of our families have ever had diabetes. Is this possible?

No clinical or research studies have shown such an association, but any stress event a viral or immunization stress certainly could be a precipitating event. If he had islet cell or GAD antibodies at diagnosis, this would be more confirmatory of such a sequence of events rather than the virus or the immunization itself “causing” the beta cell demise. Also, please remember that almost all youngsters with type 1 autoimmune diabetes do NOT have other family members with type 1 diabetes; instead, our current understanding is that they inherit a genetic predisposition and then something else (chemical, virus, etc.) is the precipitant.

SB