About 20% of patients receive the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. In some of those cases, the most accurate diagnosis would be Lada diabetes, also called 1.5.
The 3 most common types of diabetes: type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes and gestational diabetes, to which another series of varieties that fall into a different category are added, either because they are secondary to medications, other pathologies orBy defects in the function of the beta cell, the insulin producing cell. Within these varieties is lada diabetes, or latent autoimmune diabetes of the adult for its acronym in English.
Not long ago, age was one of the most used predictors in the diagnosis of different types of diabetes.For something people under 30 years of age with diabetes used to have type 1 diabetes (justly called youth diabetes) and adult people had adult or adult diabetes.
Lada diabetes is type 1 diabetes but with a slower progression.
This has changed significantly with the appearance of type 2 diabetes at earlier ages.And also that scientists have identified more cases of type 1 diabetes in adult patients, which was previously very rare.
A simple way to define lada diabetes is to say that it is type 1 diabetes but with a slower progression.The destruction of beta cells by the immune system does not occur with the magnitude and speed of type 1 diabetes. Therefore, people with lada are often diagnosed as an atypical case of type 2 diabetes, without obesity or sedentary lifestyle.They may have little or no insulin resistance (classic in type 2 diabetes). As this type of patients still has a good beta remnant working, responds well to oral hypoglycemic therapies and healthy diet.But after a few years its ability to produce insulin is finally nil.Then, a person with lada diabetes needs insulin injections on average long before a person with type 2 diabetes.
Having an appropriate diagnosis is fundamental because the management of the two conditions is different.Type 1 diabetes, diagnosed at any age, requires the application of exogenous insulin from the beginning, in a very fine regime, while people with type 2 diabetes sometimes do not need insulin for a long time, or can control it with only one injectionA day.
Therefore, it is recommended to doctors who take into account an Australian protocol that suggests that, compared to patients with type 2 diabetes, patients with lada diabetes have at least two of the following characteristics:
- Children under 50 at the time of diagnosis.
- Normal weight, with a body mass index less than 25.
- Classic symptoms at the time of diagnosis (intense thirst, frequent urine, unwanted weight loss).
- Personal history of another autoimmune disease (thyroid disease, rheumatoid arthritis or celiac disease).
- Family history of type 1 diabetes or other autoimmune diseases.
World statistics speak that about 20% of patients diagnosed with type 2 diabetes are really lad. With a positive result of the antibody exam, the doctor can leave doubts.The same goes for a low peptide level C, a marker that reveals insulin production.