Friendly bacteria in the gut may protect against insulin-dependent diabetes, a study suggests.

In tests on mice, the bugs appeared to stop the rogue immune response that triggers the disease.

Type 1 diabetes is caused by an autoimmune response which destroys insulin-producing islet cells in the pancreas.

About 300,000 people in the UK suffer from the disease. The condition often develops in childhood and has to be controlled with daily insulin jabs.

Type 2 diabetes, the much more common form of the disease linked to obesity and lifestyle, affects almost two million Britons.

Scientists in the US studied genetically engineered diabetic mice whose immune systems lacked a key protein that allowed them to respond to bacteria.

Raised in a completely germ-free environment, 80% of the mice developed severe type 1 diabetes.

When they were given back a cocktail of the bacterial “flora” normally found in the mammalian gut, only around a third of the animals became ill.

The study showed that harmless bacteria could prevent type 1 diabetes even when there is a predisposition to the disease.

It also demonstrated the role played by the immune system protein MyD88 in type 1 diabetes.

Having good bacteria in the gut may help protect people from developing type one diabetes, new research shows.

Australian endocrinologists have welcomed the findings of a US study that supports the “hygiene hypothesis” that being too clean is not good for the health.

Researchers at the University of Chicago have shown that exposure to parasites, bacteria and viruses may help guard against allergies, asthma, and other disorders of the immune system.

In particular, tests on mice showed higher levels of good bacteria in the intestine may lower the severity of type one diabetes.

The results, published in the journal Nature, could explain why rates of the disease are rising fast in Australia and in other Western nations where society has becomes increasingly focused on sterility and cleanliness.

Professor Nikolai Petrovsky, director of endocrinology at Flinders Medical Centre in South Australia, said there was an important message about diet in the “exciting” new findings.

“This suggests that exposing young children to a diet rich in prebiotics, like inulin, and probiotics, like yoghurt and kefir, may help protect them against auto-immune diabetes,” Prof Petrovsky said.

He said it might also help explain why children who are breast fed have a much lower risk of type one diabetes than children fed on cow’s milk products.

“The take home message is that a healthy diet throughout life is critical to good health (and) the best diet for a newborn is natural mother’s milk,” Prof Petrovsky said.

“Following weaning, the diet should contain a high proportion of fibre and inulin rich foods, as found in many vegetables, ideally supplemented by a top-up regular dose of probiotics from eating naturally-fermented foods like yoghurt, kefir, and cheese.”

While this formed part of the recommended healthy diet, few people in the Western world were adhering to it, he said.

“It’s little wonder that we are seeing an explosion in obesity, diabetes, heart disease and the like,” the specialist said.

“It’s time to get back to basics.”

Diabetes is Australia’s fastest growing chronic disease, with about 100,000 people suffering from the type one form.