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NetWellness provides the highest quality health information and education services created and evaluated by faculty of our partner universities.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
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NetWellness provides the highest quality health information and education services created and evaluated by faculty of our partner universities.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
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Diabetes |
Diabetes in the family05/22/2000 |
My parents and brother have diabetes. My mom (Since she was 58, after a kidney transplant) and brother (Since he was 13) take insulin and my dad (since he was 63) takes oral medication. I am 41. Am I at a higher risk for the disease? Any preventions?
Of the two most common forms of diabetes, type 1 and type 2, the disease appears to be inherited more commonly with type 2 (formerly called adult-onset or non-insulin-dependent). In fact there can be inheritance of both of these forms of diabetes. This means that the chances of inheriting the disease are greater than in people without diabetes in the family but there is no certainty any individual will indeed get it. The ages and circumstances at which your parents developed diabetes suggest they probably have type 2 diabetes. The most common explanation for your brother would be that he has type 1 diabetes but we are increasingly seeing type 2 diabetes in people his age.The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is sponsoring separate trials for prevention of type 1 and type 2 diabetes and those are available in major teaching medical centers across the country. The type 1 Diabetes Prevention Trial (DPT-1) screens close relatives of people with type 1 diabetes to identify the few who truly have an increased risk and might want to enter the study. The type 2 prevention trial (I don`t know whether they are still recruiting patients) looks for people at increased risk on the basis of family history of diabetes, presence of obesity and blood sugar testing which is in the gray zone between normal and abnormal, referred to as "impaired fasting glucose" or "impaired glucose tolerance." You didn`t mention body weight with any of your family members but that would be an important factor in likelihood for type 1 or for type 2. For people with risk factors for type 2 diabetes, a balanced diet and exercise designed to achieve either normal body weight or, in people substantially overweight, ongoing weight reduction will reduce risk of type 2 diabetes. It is controversial what measures reduce risk of type 1 diabetes but I would highly recommend the DPT-1 trial to those concerned about their risk. Information about NIH clinical trials is available at
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct/gui/c/b (direct link provided below)
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Robert M Cohen, MD Professor of Clinical Medicine Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism Department of Internal Medicine College of Medicine University of Cincinnati |
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