**2.1 Autoantibodies and autoreactive T cells**

The immune system develops autoantibodies (AAbs) in order to attack selfproteins. AAbs are used for T1D diagnosis, classification, and prediction of disease development. They do not play a direct role in disease pathogenesis, unlike autoreactive T cells [6]. Instead, AAbs are strong indicators of islet cell destruction [7]. They can be utilized to identify those at increased risk for T1D because they are produced during the natural history of T1D, including the stage before disease diagnosis [8].

*Type 1 Diabetes: Current Advances in High-Throughput Technologies and Computational… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108248*

## **Figure 2.** *Potential sources of biomarkers for T1D.*


*ICA: Intracytoplasmic autoantibody, IAA: Insulin autoantibody, GADA: Glutamate Dehydrogenase-65 autoantibody, IA2A: Insulinoma antigen-2 autoantibody, ZnT8a: Zinc transporter 8 autoantibody. \*5 year risk.*
