Multiple sclerosis (MS) and insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM, also known as type 1- or juvenile diabetes) are two superficially very different diseases that actually have a lot in common geographically, ethnically, and genetically. Both are also autoimmune diseases, and growing evidence suggests that in both cases a trigger of the self-destructive immune process is milk.

Studies have long shown that IDDM and MS are prevalent in countries that drink cow's milk and rare in countries that don't. Recently, the evidence has become less circumstantial. Last year, in the latest in a string of similar studies, Hans-Michael Dosch, Senior Scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, and his colleagues in Toronto and Pittsburgh reported that the T cells of people with MS, IDDM, or at high genetic risk for IDDM were very highly, and almost identically, reactive to several different cow's milk proteins and to lookalike proteins from the pancreas and nervous system. It was the strongest evidence yet that, at least in some cases of IDDM and MS, an allergy to milk becomes an allergy to one's own body.

Clinical trials are now under way to try and prevent or arrest the progress of IDDM and MS by avoiding cow's milk. Already, in one trial from Finland, a cow's milk-based formula with pre-digested (hypoallergenic) proteins reduced the incidence of autoimmunologic changes predictive of IDDM in genetically at risk babies by nearly 70% compared to cow's milk itself.

VERDICT: In part because of the IDDM risk, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends against cow's milk for babies under one year old. But there is no guaranty it can't trigger IDDM or MS in older children or adults too, especially with a family history of autoimmune or allergic disease. Already, a large Finnish study has found that siblings of children with IDDM appear to have a greater than fivefold risk of developing IDDM if they drink lots of milk.

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Syd Baumel
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