In the present study, based on our experimental evidence that the natural susceptibility gene to EMC virus-induced diabetes was Tyk2 in mice (Izumi et al., 2015), we could extend those observations to humans, with a TYK2 promoter variant which is associated with an overall increased risk for diabetes in Japanese subjects, particularly in patients with T1D associated with flu-like syndrome at onset. The gene discussed is TYK2; the disease is diabetes mellitus.