Diabetes

Diabetes or diabetes mellitus (sometimes called sugar diabetes) is a disease that is characterized by high blood sugar (glucose). More than 180 million people in the world have diabetes, and roughly 3 million people a year die from the disease.^[1] Diabetes is the leading cause for blindness, kidney failure, and (foot,leg)amputations in the United States. Diabetes mellitus " is a disease where either insulin is not produced (type 1 diabetes) or where insulin does not work properly (type 2 diabetes).

Diabetes insipidus or water diabetes is a different and rare disease of urine production.

Type 1 diabetes is caused by destruction of insulin-producing cells in the pancreas by the body's own immune system. People with type 1 diabetes most often experience onset before the age of 30, typically during childhood. Type 1 disease must be treated with insulin. There is currently no cure for type 1 diabetes, but promising research is in progress.

Type 2 diabetes is approximately nine times more common than type 1 diabetes, and is due to a relative lack of insulin due to insulin resistance. Insulin resistance occurs as a result of heredity, obesity, or a combination of the two. Changes in diet and activity levels can sometimes help the insulin to work normally and return blood glucose levels to the normal range. Most patients can be treated with medications to improve how insulin works (such as metformin, or pioglitazone for example), or medications that increase the amount of insulin that is produced (such as glipizide, glyburide or sitagliptin). Many people with type 2 diabetes will ultimately need to be treated with natural human insulin. Type 2 diabetes is not curable, but can be readily treated so that patients with type 2 diabetes can lead a long and healthy life.

Gestational Diabetes is a type of diabetes that occurs during pregnancy and causes high blood sugars. Since high blood glucoses can be harmful to a developing baby, gestational diabetes needs to be treated (generally with insulin) to normalize the blood sugar level. Gestational diabetes generally resolves after pregnancy, but can continue in some people. Screening for the disease is recommended.

Prediabetes is a condition previously known as impaired glucose tolerance and was invented to describe people who are likely to become diabetic in the future based on abnormal blood glucose values that are still below those needed for a definitive diagnosis of diabetes. Several studies have demonstrated that progression from prediabetes to type 2 diabetes is not inevitable and that the risk of progression can be reduced through dietary and lifestyle interventions.

There are several other forms of diabetes caused by genetic defects that disrupt normal carbohydrate metabolism; these are thankfully rare but can be quite difficult to manage. These include

• Maturity-onset diabetes of the young (MODY), a single-gene disorder with autosomal dominant inheritance caused by a defect in glucose-dependent insulin secretion. There are at least six different forms, some of which cause relatively mild symptoms.
• Diabetes due to mutant insulins is a very rare subtype of diabetes, with only a few cases having been described. Affected individuals had only mild symptoms due to the presence of one normal insulin gene.
• Diabetes due to mutant insulin receptors is very rare (less than 100 cases having been described) and leads to extreme resistance to insulin.
• Diabetes due to mutations of mitochondrial DNA is inherited from the mother, since only the mother (not the father) contributes to mitochondrial DNA in the children. The DNA mutations affect a few related functions in the mitochondria which can result in hearing loss and other symptoms.

Topics related to diabetes include:

• Blood Sugar, abnormalities of which are the central concern of diabetes diagnosis and management
• Insulin, the hormone whose discovery and commercialization revolutionized the treatment of type 1 diabetes
• Hyperglycemia, the condition of abnormally high blood glucose
• Hypoglycemia, the condition of abnormally low blood glucose
• Glycosylated hemoglobin, a variant form of hemoglobin whose concentration correlates well with blood glucose levels and the risk of long-term complications of diabetes.

References

1. ↑ WHO Diabetes Programme Facts & figures

External links

• World Health Organization Diabetes Programme
• Diabetes Teaching Center at the University of California, San Francisco
• American Diabetes Association (ADA)
• MedlinePlus Health Topics:Diabetes
• Centers for Disease Control - Diabetes

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