Diabetes LADA – Find Tex

Diabetes LADA stands for Latent Autoimmune Diabetes of Adulthood

Diabetes occurs in many types beyond type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes. One of these is Latent Autoimmune Diabetes of Adulthood (LADA).

Some patients receive the diagnosis of type 2 diabetic, despite not exhibiting all the classic symptoms associated with this condition.

In some instances, a more accurate diagnosis would be LADA.

How does LADA differ from type 2 diabetes?

Patients with LADA may lack some of the type 2 diabetes symptoms. These could include age, obesity, and the difficulty in achieving glycaemic control using standard oral hypoglycaemic agents.

If these are lacking from diagnosis, it is quite possible that the patient has LADA. LADA is more typical of the immune markers common to type 1 diabetes, yet in its early stages does not require insulin.

Patients in the early stages of LADA may also lack ketoacidosis symptoms.

However, there may be a more rapid progression to requiring insulin amongst LADA patients when compared to normal type 2 diabetics. LADA patients share features common to both type 1 and type 2 diabetics.

Transcript

LADA is a specific type of diabetes that affects adults. It shares some similarities of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes and may often be diagnosed as one of these instead of as LADA.

LADA stands for Latent Autoimmune Diabetes of Adults. Latent means it comes on slowly – in this way it’s similar to type 2 diabetes. Autoimmune is where the body attacks its own insulin producing cells; similar to type 1 diabetes

LADA has the classic symptoms of diabetes. These are increased thirst, increased need to urinate, fatigue, dry mouth, blurry vision, slow healing of cuts or sores.

Pointers that might indicate LADA include the symptoms having come on over a period of several weeks or longer, you have someone with type 1 diabetes in your close family, you have another autoimmune condition such as Rheumatoid Arthritis or Coeliac disease.

If one or more of these apply then you may be given a GAD test to help determine what diabetes type you may have. GAD means a glutamic acid decarboxylase test.

LADA is a type of diabetes that is not completely understood and not all doctors may be fully aware of LADA as separate form of diabetes.

It is not uncommon for LADA to be misdiagnosed as type 2 diabetes in some cases.

There is some debate as to how LADA should be treated. Some people may be put onto tablets such as metformin whereas others may go onto insulin.

Insulin may increase the likelihood of hypoglycemia, low blood sugar, happening but could help to slow down the loss of insulin producing cells. As with other types of diabetes, eating a healthy, balanced diet and getting activity into each day comes recommended.

Reducing your carbohydrate intake in favour of less starchy vegetables should help to regulate blood sugar levels.

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How common is LADA?

According to the UK Prospective Diabetes Study found that antibodies specific to LADA cases are found in between 6% and 10% of diabetes cases. Amongst younger patients, the incidence is more common.

How is LADA diagnosed?

Determining the presence of LADA is achieved by examining the presence of elevated levels of pancreatic autoantibodies amongst patients who have recently been diagnosed with diabetes but do not require insulin.

A GAD Antibody test can measure the presence of these autoantibodies.

These antibodies can identify LADA, and also can predict the rate of progression towards insulin dependency.

Are some people more prone to LADA?

There are some clues that can give rise to a clinical suspicion of LADA. These include:

An absence of metabolic syndromefeatures
Uncontrolled hyperglycaemia despite using oral agents
Evidence of autoimmune diseases (including Graves’ disease and Anaemia)

Those patients who have LADA and also exhibit features of metabolic syndrome are sometimes termed type 1.5 diabetics

Diabetes Types

http://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes_lada.html