In the year 2000, the World Health Organization (WHO) reckoned that 171 million people all over the world were suffering from diabetes. Experts predict that by the year 2030, there will be approximately 366 million people affected by the disease. Diabetes belongs to a group of metabolic diseases leading to a high and life-threatening blood sugar.
Most popularly, the defect is divided into two subcategories:
- diabetes type I
- diabetes type II.
Whereas type one is caused by a failure to produce the hormone insulin and often occurs at an early age, type two results from an insulin resistance developing with age.
However, there is also an in-between type which has been coined diabetes type 1.5 and which is also known as LADA, i.e. Latent Autoimmune Diabetes of Adults.
LADA: How come?
The in-between type is described as a condition in which diabetes type one develops in an adult age. That is due to the fact that the destruction of insulin-producing beta cells can occur at different rates. If it happens fast, it leads to symptoms at an early age (type one), if it happens slowly, it leads to problems at a later age (LADA).
In order to test an emerging diabetes type one, and to avoid a misdiagnosis of type two which also happens at an adult age, it is necessary to conduct antibody tests. People suffering from LADA can show a positive reaction to the antibodies test, people suffering from type two are unlikely to do so. Laboratories own ELISA kits for scientific research in order to get the results.
Avoiding a misdiagnosis
It is estimated that 20 percent of the people officially suffering from diabetes type two actually suffer from diabetes type 1.5.
In order to optimize the treatment of these people, which does not in every case require an insulin therapy but might also be managed through changes in nutrition and lifestyle, antibody tests should be conducted more than once as it may track the progression of the disease.
How far medical research has developed can be seen in the huge amounts of antibody test applications offered at www.antibodies-online.com
