MISSING THE MARK ON diabetes classification

A diabetes diagnosis may not be as black and white as you think. Diabetes Nurse Educator Jijimol Arun explains how your team might be

- Jijimol Arun

There are times in a person’s journey with diabetes that it may be necessary to  reclassify their diagnosis. Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute Diabetes Nurse Educator Jijimol Arun explains how misclassification happens and how important it is to get a diabetes diagnosis right.

Increased thirst, increased urination, hunger and tiredness. These are all symptoms of type 2 diabetes. But, they are also symptoms of type 1 diabetes, which can make distinguishing between the two difficult.

Then, throw in latent autoimmune diabetes in adulthood (LADA), a sub-group of type 1 diabetes, which has a slow onset and for which insulin may not be required early in its progression, and it is easy to see why some people may be misclassified as having type 2 diabetes when they may, in fact, have type 1.

It is estimated that about 10 per cent of adults diagnosed with type 2 diabetes actually have type 1 diabetes, and that more than a third of adults with type 1 diabetes were misdiagnosed and initially treated for type 2. While there are blood tests that can be performed, and a number of other tools to assist with diagnosis, the absence of a definitive diabetes diagnostic tool can sometimes lead to a misclassification, despite the very different ways that type 1 and type 2 diabetes develop.

HOW CAN I BE MISCLASSIFIED?

Besides the overlapping symptoms and lack of a definitive diagnostic tool, there are a number of other factors that may drive the possibility of misdiagnosis – and one is historical.