Cambridge trial tests whether a COVID jab could delay Type 1 diabetes in at-risk babies
Babies at genetic risk of Type 1 are being enrolled at Addenbrooke’s in AVAnT1A, an international trial asking if COVID-19 vaccination can prevent it.
A trial at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge is asking whether a COVID-19 vaccine, given to babies in their first year, can lower their chance of developing type 1 diabetes later. It is a question, not an answer. If you already live with type 1, it changes nothing about your care.
- It is called AVAnT1A, and it only involves babies already found to carry a higher genetic risk of type 1.
- Half get the vaccine and half get a placebo, a dummy injection with no active ingredient, decided at random.
- It measures islet autoantibodies, the immune markers that appear years before type 1 is diagnosed.
- The protocol plans 2,252 children followed to their sixth birthday, with completion expected in October 2029.
- No vaccine anywhere is licensed to prevent type 1, and none is offered for that outside a trial.
What AVAnT1A is actually testing
AVAnT1A stands for Anti-Viral Action against Type 1 Diabetes Autoimmunity. It is run by GPPAD, the Global Platform for the Prevention of Autoimmune Diabetes, a research network coordinated from Munich and funded by the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. The published protocol describes a randomised, placebo-controlled prevention trial across nine sites in five European countries. The two UK sites are Cambridge University Hospitals and the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle.
Babies are signed up in their first three months and have three injections between six and eleven months old: either an approved mRNA COVID-19 vaccine (Comirnaty) or a saline placebo. What is counted is not colds and coughs but islet autoantibodies, immune markers aimed at the insulin-making cells, which appear long before anyone feels ill. Children are seen regularly until their sixth birthday. The Cambridge Independent reported that one of the first babies at Addenbrooke’s had her injections in late 2025.
Why anyone thought to ask this at all
The idea did not come from nowhere, and it is not evidence of anything yet. Infections in a baby’s first year have long been linked with a higher chance of islet autoimmunity. In POInT, an earlier GPPAD study following genetically at-risk children, the protocol reports that a COVID-19 infection before 18 months of age was associated with more than a five-fold increase in the risk of islet autoantibodies appearing.
That is a link seen in a group of children who were already at raised risk. It does not show the virus caused those markers, and it says nothing yet about whether vaccinating changes them. That gap is exactly why the trial exists: a randomised comparison with a placebo group can answer a question that watching cannot. It can also answer it with a no, which prevention trials often do, and that result would matter too.
What this means if type 1 is already in your family
For anyone living with type 1 now, the honest answer is nothing. This is primary prevention research: it asks whether the immune attack begins at all, not how the condition is looked after once it has. It does not touch insulin, targets, sensors or appointments, and there is nothing in it to act on.
The part families may find more useful is the screening underneath it. Babies reach AVAnT1A through a separate UK study, INGR1D2, which checks genetic risk using blood already taken at the routine newborn heel-prick test, so there is no extra needle. It is free, offered at participating hospitals, and parents get the result within three months. Higher risk there means a one in ten chance or more of developing type 1 in childhood.
What a higher-risk result does and does not mean
A genetic result is a probability, not a forecast. The INGR1D2 information for parents says plainly that most children with higher-risk genes will never go on to develop diabetes. What early knowledge does change is what a family is watching for, and that matters: Diabetes UK says too many children are still not diagnosed until they are already in diabetic ketoacidosis. It also means sitting with a number that will not resolve for years, which some parents find harder than expected.
Worth knowing
Questions that make an appointment useful
When it's urgent
Type 1 can arrive in a child within days or weeks, so the signs are worth knowing whether or not anyone has been screened. Diabetes UK groups them as the 4Ts: toilet (weeing far more than usual, a dry child wetting the bed again, heavier nappies), thirsty, tired and thinner. If you see those, ask for an urgent GP appointment or get help from NHS 111, and ask for a blood glucose test.
Call 999 or go to A&E straight away if a child with those signs is also being sick, has stomach pain or diarrhoea, is breathing faster or more deeply than usual, is sleepy or confused, or has breath that smells fruity. Those can mean diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), which is life-threatening and needs treating now. Do not wait to see whether it settles, and do not let any test delay the call.