December 25, 2010

Medically Induced Diabetes

What is this you say? Why would anyone allow diabetes to be induced. It is one of the types of diabetes that is recognized by the American Diabetes Association (ADA). I feel that there is one exception that is not officially recognized by the ADA, but still exists in daily life.

I will start with the not recognized diabetes which I will emphasize is not considered by the ADA. This is when an accident happens which severely damages the pancreas making it incapable of insulin production. This does not happen that often, but there are a few individuals in this unofficial category.

The medically induced is simply called – Drug- or chemical-induced diabetes. There are apparently many drugs that can impair insulin secretion, but not cause diabetes by themselves. These drugs can start diabetes in people with insulin resistance. When this happens, the classification is difficult because the sequence or importance of the beta-cell dysfunction and insulin resistance in unknown.

Some toxins like Vacor (a rat poison) and intravenous pentamidine can destroy pancreatic beta-cells, but these are rare. There are many drugs and hormones that can affect insulin action. A list (link is broken) in table one is not all-inclusive, but includes the more commonly recognized drug-, hormone-, or toxin-induced forms of diabetes.

When I was told recently that a friend had medically induced type 2 diabetes, I had to look this up. There is only a classification of medically induced and no type associated with it. I am not going to debate this until the ADA does more clarification or assigns a type. Then there is diabetes resulting from prescription steroids.

Medically induced diabetes is still diabetes and must be treated as such. Some are treated with oral medications and the rest with insulin depending on the damage done to the pancreas. Most of the few that have accident caused diabetes are on insulin.

Read the ADA definitions here.   This definitions for the above discussion are about one-third to one half way down the page.

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