There are five forms of diabetes, and not two, say researchers

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AFP

Wednesday, 7 march, 2018 06:29

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Wednesday, 7 march, 2018 06:29

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Paris | scientists have proposed a new classification of diabetes by estimating that there were five different forms, and not two, as is allowed currently, which can according to them make it possible to refine the treatments.

Currently, this disorder of the assimilation of sugars by the body is classified according to two categories.

Type 1 diabetes (approximately 10% of cases), which appears most often in a brutal way in the child’s or young adulthood, is characterized by insufficient production of insulin. This hormone is secreted by the pancreas helps to maintain a balance in the level of glucose in the blood.

Type 2 diabetes (almost 90% of cases) corresponds to a prolonged increase in the rate of sugar in the blood, often associated with obesity and lifestyle (sedentary lifestyle, unbalanced diet).

The authors of a Swedish study, recently published in the journal Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology propose to further refine this classification by introducing five categories, three severe and two more benign.

“This is a first step toward tailored treatments for diabetes (…). The current classification is not sufficient to predict the complications that may arise,” said one of the authors of the study, professor Leif Groop, university of Lund.

To achieve these five categories, the researchers examined data from 13 720 patients since 2008, by analyzing their production of insulin, their blood sugar level in the blood or the age at which the disease appeared.

The first of these five new categories corresponds to the type 1 diabetes. The other four are subdivisions of type 2 diabetes, each with its particular characteristics.

One of them is characterized by a higher risk of retinopathy (damage to the retina that affects almost 50% of patients with type 2 diabetes). Another case of obese patients and is marked by a severe insulin resistance, with a high risk of renal damage.

The last two categories, less severe, consist of obese patients who develop the disease at a young age for the first, and older patients for the second (the largest group, 40% patients approximately).

One adult in eleven in the world ($425 million) is diagnosed with diabetes, 10 million more than in 2015, according to figures published mid-November by the international diabetes Federation (IDF) on the occasion of the world Day dedicated to this disease.