The late diagnosis of type 1 diabetes and its severe complications is not uncommon. According to a new study led by a team at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC), more than 25 percent of children in Quebec diagnosed with type 1 diabetes already have diabetic ketoacidosis. Their findings, published in CMAJ Open, indicate this number has been on the rise by two percent per year since 2001.
“The symptoms of type 1 diabetes are not recognized fast enough by the parents, the schools or healthcare providers,” says the study’s lead author, Dr. Meranda Nakhla, a pediatric endocrinologist at the Montreal Children's Hospital of the MUHC and a scientist from the Child Health and Human Development Program of the RI-MUHC. “A simple blood sugar test is all that is needed to diagnose a child with type 1 diabetes in presence of symptoms such as frequent urination, excessive thirst, weight loss, a lack of energy, and constant hunger.”
Type 1 diabetes is one of the most common chronic diseases of childhood and affects around 4,000 children in Quebec. It occurs when the pancreas stops producing insulin, an important hormone that helps your body control the level of sugar in the blood. Diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) is a serious complication of diabetes that occurs when the body produces high level of blood acids that become toxic.
Researchers looked at the trends of DKA by analyzing data provided by the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ), which focused on the diagnosis of type 1 diabetes in patients between the ages of 1 to 17 years, from 2001 to 2014. They identified a total of 5,741 new cases of diabetes among children and adolescents. Overall, 1,471 children presented with DKA at diabetes diagnosis (with a peak between 5 and 11 years old). Researchers also looked at different factors such as age at diabetes diagnosis, biological sex, socioeconomic and rural status.
