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Type 2 or type 1? Confused...

M

madcatlady

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My husband was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes 4 years ago. 2 months ago his blood sugar level was sky high and he is now injecting insulin twice a day (he had his first hypo just now.....). But the nurse (he thinks it was a nurse and not a dr....) told him they think he actually has type 1 diabetes as his profile and the process of the disease doesn't fit type 2. (He's skinny, eats very healthily and - apparently - pancreases don't tend to shut down so readily...????)

My father had type 1 diabetes. He was diagnosed when he was 4 and I thought that was the norm. My husband, though, is 57.

I guess it doesn't really matter what type he has, the treatment will be the same (will it?)

But I'm just intrigued - can type 1 diabetes first show itself in a person who is mid 50s?

Thanks.
 
You can get T1 diabetes at any age, in the past this wasn't realisedand there are still a lot of people who have T1 but are wrongly diagnosed as T2 because of their age.
There is one Italian study which found 2 peak ages for onset, one in the mid teens and the other in the fifties.
They have also discovered that the loss of beta cell function is gradual, In most children it tends to be a relative fast loss of insulin function but in many adults it can take quite a while for them to become truly insulin dependent.
(actually they've also found that most people with T1 still retain a bit of their own insulin even after many years)

When the onset is slow in adults it is called LADA (latent autoimmune diabetes of adults). Some people call it type 1.5 but it's really just a form of T1.
http://www.locallada.swan.ac.uk/faq.html
 
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