‘Double Diabetes’ Harder to Detect, Treat

I thought that this story was pretty interesting.

“WASHINGTON – Having one type of diabetes is bad enough, but two? Doctors are seeing a new phenomenon dubbed double diabetes that makes it harder to diagnose and treat patients — especially children.

The mix can strike at any age, and comes in various forms: Children who depend on insulin injections because of Type 1 diabetes gain weight and then get the Type 2 form in which their bodies become insulin resistant, for example.

Or someone with classic Type 2 symptoms isn’t responding to therapy, and tests reveal they also are developing the insulin-dependent form of the disease. Or they may not fall clearly into either category.

The labels are important — different forms require different treatments.

Yet “there are many people in which it’s very blurred as to what kind of diabetes they have,” says Dr. Francine Kaufman, a University of Southern California pediatric endocrinologist and past president of the American Diabetes Association.

There are no good statistics on this complex disease-mixing.”