Around eight percent of the population in the United States has diabetes. This means that around sixteen million people have been diagnosed with the disease, based only on national statistics. The American Association estimates that diabetes accounts for 178,000 deaths, as well as 54,000 amputees, and 12,000-24,000 cases of blindness annually. Blindness is twenty-five times even more fashioned among diabetic patients in comparison with nondiabetics. If current trends continue, by the year 2010 complications of diabetes will exceed both heart disease and cancer as the leading cause of death in America.
Diabetics have a high level of blood glucose. Blood sugar level is regulated by insulin, a hormone secreted by the pancreas, which releases it in response to carbohydrate consumption. Insulin causes the cells of the body to absorb glucose from the blood. The glucose then serves as fuel for cellular functions.
Traditional diagnostic standards for diabetes have been fasting plasma glucose stages greater than 140 mg/dL on 2 occasions and plasma glucose greater than 200 mg/dL following a seventy five-gram glucose load. However, even more recently, the American Association lowered the criteria for a diabetes diagnosis to fasting plasma glucose stages equal to or higher than 126 mg/dL. Fasting plasma stages outside the normal limit demand further testing, usually by repeating the fasting plasma glucose check and (if indicated) initiating an oral glucose tolerance test.
The many symptoms of diabetes include excessive urination, excessive thirst and hunger, sudden weight loss, blurred vision, delay in healing of wounds, dry and itchy skin, repeated infections, fatigue and headache. While suggestive of diabetes, these symptoms can also be caused by other factors, and therefore anyone with symptoms suspicious of the disease deserve to be tested.
There are 2 selection varieties of diabetes. Type I (juvenile diabetes, also known as insulin-dependent diabetes): The cause of type I diabetes starts with pancreatic inability to make insulin. This causes 5-10% of cases of diabetes. The pancreatic Islet of Langerhans cells, which secrete the hormone, are destroyed by the patient's own immune system, probably as it mistakes them for a virus. Viral infections are believed to be the trigger that sets off this auto-immune disease. Type I diabetes is most prevelant in the caucasian population and has a hereditary component.
If untreated, Type I or juvenile diabetes can lead to death within two to three months of the onset, as the cells of the body starve because they no longer receive the hormonal prompt to absorb glucose. While a vast majority of Type I diabetics are young (hence the term Juvenile ), the condition can develop at any age. Autoimmune diabetes is diagnosed by an immunological assay which shows the presence of anti-insulin/anti-islet-telephone antibodies.
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