Diabetes is Actually Five Separate Diseases
Diabetes is actually five separate diseases, research suggests
According to the standard definition, Diabetes is a disease where individuals blood glucose or blood sugar levels are too high. Glucose is provided from the food we eat. Insulin hormone helps the glucose to get into the cell in order to provide them with energy. There are two types of diabetes: type 1 and type 2. In the type 1 diabetes, our body doesn't produce insulin. On the other hand, with type 2 diabetes our body is not making or using insulin in the right way. Type 2 diabetes is the most common type. If there isn't enough insulin, the glucose stays in the body.
As we said this is the standard definition of diabetes. According to a new study, scientists are proposing a completely new and different way of looking at diabetes. This new study has the strain to completely change the disease from all sides of views. It is supposed that will change the way it’s diagnosed and treated as well as the way people with diabetes are living.
This new study is published in the Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology. It was conducted on newly diagnosed patients with diabetes that were part of Swedish and Finnish cohorts. There were exactly 14,775 patients involved, and the study involved a detailed analysis of their blood. 5 different clusters were found within the diagnosing, as well as different variations in the way people are being insulin resistant. For instance, there were people who were insulin resistant and they're in your system was acting in a way that provided them unable to produce insulin. On the other hand, in another patient, the body found it difficult to create insulin while at the same time the immune system was fine.
This leads to a conclusion that in time different types and personalized treatment may be available, with a deeper understanding of the doctor's side about the disease. This could mean a revolutionary way of diagnosing diabetes.
As said before, the patients were separated into 5 different clusters:
Cluster 1 - severe autoimmune diabetes is broadly the same as the classical type 1 - it hit people when they were young, seemingly healthy and an immune disease left them unable to produce insulin.
Cluster 2 - severe insulin-deficient diabetes patients initially looked very similar to those in cluster 1 - they were young, had a healthy weight and struggled to make insulin, but the immune system was not at fault.
Cluster 3 - severe insulin-resistant diabetes patients were generally overweight and making insulin but their body was no longer responding to it.
Cluster 4 - mild obesity-related diabetes was mainly seen in people who were very overweight but metabolically much closer to normal than those in cluster 3.
Cluster 5 - mild age-related diabetes patients developed symptoms when they were significantly older than in other groups and their disease tended to be milder.
One of the researchers, Professor Leif Groop, said that this step was really of great importance because it's meaning I've totally new step towards the precision medicine.
"In the ideal scenario, this is applied to diagnosis and we target treatment better." - said professor Groop.
He also added that the three severe forms of the disease could be treated more aggressively compared to the two milder ones. Patients from the cluster 2 are classified as type 2 as they don't have an autoimmune disease. The study claims that this is most probably caused by a defect in the beta-cells, and not so much from being fat like it was considered until now. Patients from cluster 2 have a higher risk of losing their sight, while patients from cluster 3 have a greater risk of getting kidneys disease.
Dr. Victoria Salem is considering this as a new and definitely more practical way of thinking about diabetes as a disease. But again she warned that the study won’t change the practice today.
She also added this: "There is still a massively unknown quantity - it may well be that worldwide there are 500 subgroups depending on genetic and local environmental effects. Their analysis has five clusters, but that may grow."
Dr. Emily Burns, from Diabetes UK, said understanding the diseases could help "personalize treatments and potentially reduce the risk of diabetes-related complications in the future".
"This research takes a promising step toward breaking down type 2 diabetes in more detail, but we still need to know more about these subtypes before we can understand what this means for people living with the condition." – She said.