Our proposal that a strong cell immune response protects α cells against viral infection and subsequent death in T1D seems at odds with the association of polymorphic variants of MDA5 that reduce helicase activity with a lower risk to develop T1D (Nejentsev et al., 2009; Winkler et al., 2011; Lincez et al., 2015). Here, IFIH1 is linked to viral infectious disease.