“Why did I just get diagnosed with type 1 diabetes now?”
I'm 42 years old, and I have just been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. I know that this isn't something that you just develop, and I thought that type 1 was generally diagnosed in children. Is it possible to be diagnosed with type 1 diabetes now, when I'm well into adulthood?
2 Answers
The usual patient presents in early age. But any living person is at some risk for autoimmune diabetes if they have a certain genetic make up. I have diagnosed patients in their seventies.
Yes DM1 can occur in adults. It happened to me 26 yrs ago at age 57. We used to use the term "Juvenile diabetes" for what we call Type1 now and we called Type 2 diabetes" Adult onset diabetes". We have had to stop using these terms because we now are seeing Type 2 in children and Type 1 in adults. So the new terminology. We don't know why this is occurring but it is. Type 1 is still more common in children & Type 2 in adults but there is now a great deal of overlap. Type 2 in children is probably at least partially due to the epidemic of obesity in children. Type 1 in adults is not so well understood but it may be that it was always there & we just mis-diagnosed. I have seen for many years, adults developing diabetes diagnosed as T2 but oral agents were ineffective & they needed insulin much earlier that others. These folks were probably T1 & diagnosed T2 because they were adults. Good luck & keep it under control.
