The Forgotten Infectious Hypothesis of Diabetes: Reframing Parasitic, Immunological, and Pancreatogenic Pathways as Drivers of Global Metabolic Disease
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT Diabetes mellitus is traditionally classified as a non-communicable metabolic disorder. However, emerging evidence from parasitology, immunology, global health, and One Health research suggests that chronic parasitic infections may directly contribute to pancreatic injury, persistent immune activation, microbiome remodeling, and immune–metabolic dysregulation—mechanisms capable of initiating or accelerating diabetic phenotypes. This article reframes diabetes through an infectious–metabolic lens and proposes the Infectious–Metabolic Continuum (IMC), an integrative conceptual model linking helminths, protozoa, immunomodulatory pathways, and pancreatogenic processes. Special emphasis is placed on Type 3c Diabetes Mellitus (T3cDM), an underdiagnosed form of diabetes caused by exocrine pancreatic injury, often associated with neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). The article also discusses implications for the United States, Canada, and Switzerland (WHO/IARC/GAVI/FIND), highlighting diagnostic inequities, gaps in parasitic screening, and opportunities for new therapeutic strategies. Reintroducing the infectious hypothesis of diabetes opens new avenues for earlier detection, precision medicine, and global health equity.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".