Related topics: diabetes
Diabetes mellitus type 1
hideDiabetes mellitus type 1 (Type 1 diabetes, T1D, T1DM, IDDM, juvenile diabetes) is a form of diabetes mellitus. Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that results in destruction of insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas. Lack of insulin causes an increase of fasting blood glucose (around 70-120 mg/dL in nondiabetic people) that begins to appear in the urine above the renal threshold (about 190-200 mg/dl in most people), thus connecting to the symptom by which the disease was identified in antiquity, sweet urine. Glycosuria or glucose in the urine causes the patients to urinate more frequently, and drink more than normal (polydipsia). Classically, these were the characteristic symptoms which prompted discovery of the disease.
Type 1 is lethal unless treated with exogenous insulin. Injection is the traditional and still most common method for administering insulin; jet injection, indwelling catheters, and inhaled insulin has also been available at various times, and there are several experimental methods as well. All replace the missing hormone formerly produced by the now non-functional beta cells in the pancreas. In recent years, pancreas transplants have also been used to treat type 1 diabetes. Islet cell transplant is also being investigated and has been achieved in mice and rats, and in experimental trials in humans as well. Use of stem cells to produce a new population of functioning beta cells seems to be a future possibility, but has yet to be demonstrated even in laboratories as of 2008.
Type 1 diabetes (formerly known as "childhood", "juvenile" or "insulin-dependent" diabetes) is not exclusively a childhood problem; the adult incidence of type 1 is noteworthy—many adults who contract type 1 diabetes are misdiagnosed with type 2 due to confusion on this point.
There is currently no clinically useful preventive measure against developing type 1 diabetes, though a vaccine has been proposed and anti-antibody approaches are also being tested. Most people who develop type 1 were otherwise healthy and of a healthy weight on onset, but they can lose weight quickly and dangerously, if not promptly diagnosed. Although the cause of type 1 diabetes is still not fully understood, the immune system damage is characteristic of type 1.
The most definite laboratory test to distinguish type 1 from type 2 diabetes is the C-peptide assay, which is a measure of endogenous insulin production since external insulin has not (to date) included C-peptide. The presence of anti-islet antibodies (to Glutamic Acid Decarboxylase, Insulinoma Associated Peptide-2 or insulin), or lack of insulin resistance, determined by a glucose tolerance test, would also be suggestive of type 1. Many type 2 diabetics continue to produce insulin internally, and all have some degree of insulin resistance.
Testing for GAD 65 antibodies has been proposed as an improved test for differentiating between type 1 and type 2 diabetes as it appears that the immune system malfunction is connected with their presence.
For more information about Diabetes mellitus type 1, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
News tagged with type 1 diabetes
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Crack open the latest medical textbook to the chapter on type 2, or adult-onset, diabetes, and you'll be hard pressed to find the term "immunology" anywhere. This is because metabolic conditions and immunologic conditions ...
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Researchers at the Harold Hamm Oklahoma Diabetes Center have found a way to stop the damage caused by Type 1 diabetes with the combination of insulin and a common vitamin found in most medicine cabinets.
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In findings that add to the prospects of regenerating insulin-producing cells in people with type 1 diabetes, researchers in Europe -- co-funded by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation -- have shown that insulin-producing ...
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Scientists from Cambridge University have discovered four rare mutations of a gene associated with type 1 diabetes (T1D) that reduce the risk of developing the disease. Their findings, published today in the journal Science Expres ...
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A group of scientists in California is trying to develop a cheaper, less invasive way to spot the early stages of retinal damage from diabetic retinopathy, the leading cause of blindness in American adults, before it leads ...
Stem cells crucial to diabetes cure in mice
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More than five years ago, Dr. Lawrence C.B. Chan and colleagues in his Baylor College of Medicine laboratory cured mice with type 1 diabetes by using a gene to induce liver cells to make insulin.
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Scientists at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and the University of Ottawa have discovered what may be an important clue to the cause of type 1 diabetes. Dr. Fraser Scott and his team tested 42 people with type 1 diabetes ...
Researchers engineer pancreatic cell transplants to evade immune response
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In a finding that could significantly influence the way type 1 diabetes is treated, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have developed a technique for transplanting insulin-producing pancreatic ...
Compounds that trigger beta cell replication identified
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Researchers at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) have identified a set of compounds that can trigger the proliferation of insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, using sophisticated high-throughput ...
