Although the fact that people with type I diabetes do not produce insulin is widely accepted, a recent study suggests otherwise.Around a third produce the hormone long after diagnosis.
The residual insulin production can continue for more than four decades, researchers reported in a recent edition of Diabetes Care magazine.Their findings could help avoid the erroneous diagnosis of type I diabetes as type II diabetes, which is more common, and improve blood sugar control treatments, suggested.
"Other studies have shown that some patients with type I diabetes who have lived with the disease for many years continue to segregate insulin, and the assumption has been that these patients are exceptional," said the main author of the study, Dr. Carla Greenbaum, directorof the Operations Center of the DT1 exchange biobanco, a repository of biological samples of type I diabetes.
"For the first time we can definitively say that these patients are a true subgroup of the population with type I diabetes, which has important clinical implications and for health policy," he said in a press release from the magazine.
Throughout the world, around 35 million people suffer from type I diabetes, researchers said.Autoimmune disease causes the destruction of cells that produce insulin in the pancreas, which means that patients should receive insulin injections or an insulin pump.
The researchers examined samples of type I diabetes of more than 900 people from 5 to 88 years of age, and found that the C peptide, a byproduct of insulin production, was present in patients of all ages.
But the C peptide was found more frequently and in higher concentrations in which they had been diagnosed in adulthood.Among those who had had type I diabetes between three and five, the C peptide was found in 78 percent of those diagnosed after 18 years of age, and in less than half of those diagnosed before 18.
In addition, 16 percent of those diagnosed in adulthood and six percent of those diagnosed in childhood had residual C peptide more than four decades later, the researchers found.They concluded that there are key differences between type I diabetes diagnosed in childhood and the one that develops in adulthood.
"These findings give more credibility to the research that is being carried out on directed therapies that would prolong insulin production, helping patients with type I diabetes to better manage their disease and reduce complications," he said in the statement ofPress The Co -author of the study, Asa Davis, program manager of the exchange of the DT1."For example, potential immunotherapy treatments are already being studied with that goal in mind, and our findings highlight that people diagnosed at an early age may be more likely to benefit from these methods."
The researchers also said that their findings could have important implications for policies, noting that many cases of type 1 diabetes perhaps do not meet the requirements for the insulin bomb of federal or private insurers, which are based on the lack of production ofinsulin.
Source: Healthday / Mary Elizabeth Dallas