Health News: Newly Identified Type of Diabetes Affects Millions (along with a brief on diabetes)

Diabetes Mellitus (DM), or simply Diabetes, represents a set of diseases that affect how our body deals and regulates its blood sugar, due to insufficient insulin production or impaired response to insulin.

Universal blue circle symbol for diabetes

The word Diabetes comes from Greek origin - διαβήτης (diabētēs) which means passing through, in relevance to excessive urination, while the word Mellitus comes from Latin - mellītus, which means honey sweetened or sweet as honey, in relevance to the excess sugar levels in urine.

Fun But-Not-So-Cool Fact: Thomas Willis, an English Doctor is the one who added the term Mellitus to the definition of the Diabetes disease back in 1675m after noticing a sweet TASTE of the urine (referred medically as Glycosuria).. YUCK

The essential problem with Diabetes, is the elevated blood glucose level, which has serious implications over the health and at times the life of the person. The most prevalent symptoms of diabetes include unexplained weight loss, frequent urination (Polyuria), increased thirst (polydipsia) and hunger (polyphagia). Additional symptoms include blurry vision, ketones in urine, slow hearing sores and fatigue...

Common Symptoms of Diabetes

Diabetes is normally identified as one of two types:

• Type 1: Refers to complete lack in insulin production, due to the body's autoimmune system attacking its own pancreas with antibodies destroying insulin producing cells. This type typically occurs within childhood, yet might also develop at any age, and is normally treated via administration of insulin hormone on a life long basis. Being an autoimmune disease, the causes behind are still not fully understood and are often related to genetics.

• Type 2: Refers to either insulin resistance, meaning body's cells not properly responding to insulin, or to insufficient insulin production by the pancreas. More common type and can practically develop at any age (95% of adult cases are at the moment reported as type 2), and is generally considered a milder case of type 1 diabetes, while still having serious health implications. Type 2 is often managed with life style changes, due to obesity and sedentary life style being some of its key causes, with the need for medications at some point in time to allow body's proper use of insulin, or even to administer insulin, according to the case and status of each patient.

Another Fun Fact: After learning about causes of type 2 diabetes, I left the article for few minutes and did some quick workout - 10 mins active breaks are much needed for every 1 hour of work/steemit :)

In addition to those 2 types above, two conditions are also linked to diabetes without classifying as a full blown diabetes condition due to their temporal and reversible status:

• Prediabetes: Represents an elevated case of blood sugar level, without qualifying to be a type 2 level, yet. Exercise and life style management can prevent this from developing into a type 2 diabetes.
• Gestational Diabetes: Essentially represented in pregnant women developing high blood sugar levels during their second trimester of pregnancy and onwards. If not properly managed, can affect the weight of the baby, and can develop into a type 2 diabetes later in life .
  Note: Some references, such as webmd classify this as a third type of diabetes

The newly identified type of diabetes: Type 3c

The newly identified type 3c diabetes, refers to Exocrine Pancreas Diabetes. It is onset due to pancreatic disease (usually pancreatitis: inflammation of the pancreas), surgery, or tumors of the pancreas. While it needs not happen directly afterwards, it could occur long after the injury.

Pancreatic Model of Exocrine and Endocrine Function Locations

A recent study conducted by Chris Woodmansey, et. al, and published in the Diabetes Care journal (see reference 8 below) between 2005 and 2016, and that spanned over 2.3 Million medical records in England, was able to properly identify this type via looking at adult onset diabetes.

Type 3c was found to be more common among adults than type 1, and that type 3c patients have twice the risk of poor blood sugar levels than type 2. According to Andrew McGovern, a member on the research team:

They were also five to ten times more likely to need insulin, depending on their type of pancreas disease.

Another key finding of the study is that a large number of those type 3c cases are being misdiagnosed as type 2, which would effect treatment methods and outcomes. In fact, per the study, roughly up to 3% were only properly identified as having type 3c diabetes. Per the study:

The 559 cases of diabetes following pancreatic disease were mostly classified by clinicians as type 2 diabetes (87.8%) and uncommonly as diabetes of the exocrine pancreas (2.7%)

In fact, many of the type 2 treatment methods would be ineffective in treating type 3c, such as gliclazide, and hence the increased health risk for patients and the importance of proper diagnosis. Better glycemic control needs to be put in place, but also greater requirement for insulin is at hand. Also according to McGovern:

Most people with type 3c diabetes need insulin and, unlike with other diabetes types, can also benefit from taking digestive enzymes with food. These are taken as a tablet with meals and snacks.

Conclusion

In conclusion, type 3c stands as a recently new type of diabetes that requires further research into better and more accurate diagnosis as it affects much larger numbers of the population than previously expected, and due to the health and financial implications improper diagnosis can cause onto patients.

Thank you for reading through, and hope you found this informative :)

@mcfarhat

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References:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetes_mellitus
2. https://www.news-medical.net/health/What-is-Diabetes.aspx
3. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/diabetes/basics/definition/con-20033091
4. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/diabetes/basics/symptoms/con-20033091
5. https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/guide/types-of-diabetes-mellitus#1
6. https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/guide/types-of-diabetes-mellitus#2
7. https://theconversation.com/newly-identified-third-type-of-diabetes-is-being-wrongly-diagnosed-as-type-2-83536
8. http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2017/08/30/dc17-0542
9. http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/third-type-diabetes-millions/

Photo Credits:

1. Image 1
2. Image 2
3. Image 3

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