Last Updated on December 11, 2024
A new study could be leading to a major breakthrough in type 1 diabetes. Research out of Germany was looking to see if they could predict type1 before any symptoms should.
The study called “Fr1da,” tried to diagnose children between the ages of 2 and five by using islet auto antibodies in the bloodstream.
The goal was to diagnose the children before they start displaying any of the symptoms of diabetes. If we can start treating type 1 before symptoms start showing, we can prevent a lot of severe health complications that come with un-diagnosed type 1.
The study is going to look at over 100,000 different children in Bavaria, and it is going to look for beta cell auto antibodies as a bio-marker for type 1 diabetes. As of November of 2015, the study had completed 26,760 examinations on children. Of those children, they had successfully diagnosed 105 children.
Diagnosed, Now What?
In this study, after a child was diagnosed with diabetes, the families were offered a four-hour class in the diabetes classes in Bavaria. The large majority of the families decided to participate in the course to learn more about diabetes and how to manage it. The classes provided medical information as well as simple tips to help keep their kids healthy and happy. They also helped show the parents what their futures were going to look like with insulin.
For parents that have just learned that their child has a chronic condition, it’s important to give them education and support to help through this difficult time. Most parents don’t understand diabetes and what type of impact it’s going to have on their child and their family.
What Does This Mean?
So, let’s say that we can predict type 1 diabetes before children start having symptoms, what’s that going to mean to the diabetic community? The first advantage to predicting diabetes is few severe health complications and deaths related to type 1 diabetes. The earlier that we can diagnose diabetes, the better we can control it and keep it from having severe consequences. It could also drastically reduce the number of deaths from un-diagnosed diabetes.
Instead of children not being diagnosed until they are ten years old or older, we can start helping manage their diabetes years earlier. The more experience and education that we can give to type 1 diabetics at a younger age we can also assume will lead to more managed diabetes later in life. This is true also for those suffering from type 2 diabetes.
One of the most important parts of this study is that we are learning a lot about type 1 diabetes and the mechanics of how it works inside the body. The more that we understand about the disease, the closer we are to finding a cure for type 1 diabetes. Regardless of the impact that the Fr1da study has on predicting diabetes, it’s important to understand every angle of the disease. These studies are necessary steps towards finding a way to counteract diabetes.
Another interesting fact that we can learn from this study is the impact of educating parents early in the diagnosis. As these children grow older, we can see the effect that early diagnosis and early education makes on controlling diabetes. If we can’t discover a cure yet, we should diagnosis the disease as early as possible and learn ways to manage it effectively.
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