Diabetes is made up of FIVE different conditions - not two, discover researchers
Diabetes is actually made up of five conditions, researchers have discovered.
For
decades it has been considered to be two different forms - type one, an
autoimmune disease in which people stop producing insulin, and type
two, in which the body becomes resistant to insulin.
But now a major project in some Scandinavian has found type two diabetes should actually be categorised as four different diseases.
The
researchers, said the findings
should prompt a ‘paradigm shift’ in the way people treat diabetes.
They believe the more precise groupings- each of which are genetically distinct - will aid diagnosis, help tailor
treatments and lead to proper precision medicines for the disease.
Mild obesity-related
diabetes includes obese patients, but is less serious and includes
people who fall ill at a relatively young age.
And
the final group, mild age-related diabetes, is the largest group, with
40 per cent of all patients, and consists mostly of elderly patients.
Diabetes
is rapidly becoming Britain’s fastest growing health crisis, with the
number of affected patients having doubled in 20 years to 3.7million.
The
researchers, whose work is published in the journal, based their findings on 14,775 newly diagnosed
patients in some countries.
Researcher said: ‘This is the first step towards personalised treatment of diabetes.
‘Current
diagnostics and classification of diabetes are insufficient and unable
to predict future complications or choice of treatment.
‘Existing
treatment guidelines are limited by the fact they respond to poor
metabolic control when it has developed, but do not have the means to
predict which patients will need intensified treatment.
‘This
study moves us towards a more clinically useful diagnosis, and
represents an important step towards precision medicine in diabetes.’ Dr. said: ‘Type one and type two diabetes are
very different conditions, but we don’t yet know enough about the
subtypes that could exist within them.
‘Finding
those subtypes will help us personalise treatments and potentially
reduce the risk of diabetes-related complications in the future.
‘This
research takes a promising step toward breaking down type twp diabetes
in more detail, but we still need to know more about these subtypes
before we can understand what this means for people living with the
condition.
‘For example, whether we’d find the same subtypes in people of different ethnicity or nationality.’
Labels: autoimmune diseases, diabetes, high blood sugar, insulin deficient, insulin resistant, low insulin production, obesity, Type 1 & type 2 diabetes
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home