HERV-K18 transcription and SAg function in cells capable of efficient presentation are induced by proinflammatory stimuli such as viruses and interferon-alpha and may trigger progression of disease to insulitis or from insulitis to overt diabetes.
In summary, no correlation between a positive nested PCR signal for IDDMK(1,2)22 and diabetes was found indicating that the new sequence represents just an additional member of the human endogenous retrovirus (HERV) family with lack of an exogenous counterpart.