Diagnosing type 1 diabetes is problematic. Patients only seek out help once symptoms start to arise, but the early stages of the autoimmune disease have already been at work for a number of years. Up until now, there has been no reliable method of detecting early stage, presymptomatic diabetes; however, a recent discovery could be set to change all of that. Scientists at the Medical Research Council’s Clinical Science Centre (CSC) in London, in collaboration with scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, have identified microRNAs (miRNAs) that could act as effective biomarkers years before symptoms even develop, as they circulate in the blood during the early stages if the disease (1).