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There's an inherited kind, an earned kind, and a "whoops, diabetes!" kind. My sister spent the first 36 years of her life without diabetes or symptoms of diabe

There's an inherited kind, an earned kind, and a "whoops, diabetes!" kind. My sister spent the first 36 years of her life without diabetes or symptoms of diabetes. 5'3", 130 pounds. Then she had her second child, and whatever happened during that time eradicated her ability to deal with sugar. She had been perfectly healthy aside from an ovarian cyst which was removed before she was pregnant with the second child. So now she's a type 1 diabetic, complete with a blood glucose monitor and an insulin pump.

nradov 5y ago
There is some evidence that adult onset type 1 diabetes can be triggered in susceptible individuals by certain viral infections. https://www.healthline.com/diabetesmine/type_i_diabetes https://www.healthline.com/diabetesmine/type_i_diabetes
- justin66 5y ago
  There is a lot of evidence. The tone of that blog post is potentially a bit overly doubtful, although a person could go into a pretty interesting google dive for medical research papers and more information based on it if they wanted to, so I wouldn't complain. The mechanisms for viruses causing adult-onset type 1 diabetes have perhaps not been well understood, but there's now little doubt that it happens. I don't know how long it's been a subject of active study but researchers talked to my father about his adult-onset type 1 diabetes, which followed a bad case of the mumps, in the early eighties. I think it's just very, very tough to prove something like this in a way that is technically beyond doubt. My dad was part of a cluster of cases but, you know, that's not proof of causation, even if you find a lot of them. Interesting field.
aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 5y ago
Presumably she had gestational diabetes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestational_diabetes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestational_diabetes
- kyriakos 5y ago
  Always thought that goes away after pregnancy is over
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  She did have it, but then she her blood sugar levels returned to normal afterward. About a year later, her vision started getting blurry during a vacation trip and she did not feel well. It's at that point that she ended up with her diabetes.
mnw21cam 5y ago
Type 1 diabetes really is the type that hits out the blue seemingly without explanation. It is not caused by obesity, poor diet, or lack of exercise. Type 1 is caused by the body's immune system turning round and destroying the pancreatic beta cells that produce insulin. There has been a lot of suggestion that this may be triggered by a viral infection that the immune system is trying to fight, but we're not 100% sure. It can hit at any age, although most commonly it tends to be in the teens and early twenties. Regardless, if your sister truly has type 1 diabetes (and it can often be misdiagnosed) then she has few to no working beta cells left, and it is entirely not her fault. Interestingly, there is a stronger genetic component to type 1 diabetes than there is to type 2 diabetes. We can analyse a set of 30 or so locations in the genome and give you a score, which is how likely you are to trigger type 1 diabetes. Most of the score is based on just one region in the genome, the HLA region which controls the way your immune system distinguishes between self and enemy. A person with a low score can still get type 1 diabetes, but it is much less likely. We know that to get type 1 diabetes, you need to be susceptible (that we can measure with the genetic test) but also there needs to be some kind of trigger. I don't think having a second child was the trigger, but something was.

nradov 5y ago

There is some evidence that adult onset type 1 diabetes can be triggered in susceptible individuals by certain viral infections. https://www.healthline.com/diabetesmine/type_i_diabetes https://www.healthline.com/diabetesmine/type_i_diabetes

justin66 5y ago
There is a lot of evidence. The tone of that blog post is potentially a bit overly doubtful, although a person could go into a pretty interesting google dive for medical research papers and more information based on it if they wanted to, so I wouldn't complain. The mechanisms for viruses causing adult-onset type 1 diabetes have perhaps not been well understood, but there's now little doubt that it happens. I don't know how long it's been a subject of active study but researchers talked to my father about his adult-onset type 1 diabetes, which followed a bad case of the mumps, in the early eighties. I think it's just very, very tough to prove something like this in a way that is technically beyond doubt. My dad was part of a cluster of cases but, you know, that's not proof of causation, even if you find a lot of them. Interesting field.

aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 5y ago

Presumably she had gestational diabetes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestational_diabetes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestational_diabetes

kyriakos 5y ago
Always thought that goes away after pregnancy is over
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
She did have it, but then she her blood sugar levels returned to normal afterward. About a year later, her vision started getting blurry during a vacation trip and she did not feel well. It's at that point that she ended up with her diabetes.

mnw21cam 5y ago

Type 1 diabetes really is the type that hits out the blue seemingly without explanation. It is not caused by obesity, poor diet, or lack of exercise. Type 1 is caused by the body's immune system turning round and destroying the pancreatic beta cells that produce insulin. There has been a lot of suggestion that this may be triggered by a viral infection that the immune system is trying to fight, but we're not 100% sure. It can hit at any age, although most commonly it tends to be in the teens and early twenties. Regardless, if your sister truly has type 1 diabetes (and it can often be misdiagnosed) then she has few to no working beta cells left, and it is entirely not her fault. Interestingly, there is a stronger genetic component to type 1 diabetes than there is to type 2 diabetes. We can analyse a set of 30 or so locations in the genome and give you a score, which is how likely you are to trigger type 1 diabetes. Most of the score is based on just one region in the genome, the HLA region which controls the way your immune system distinguishes between self and enemy. A person with a low score can still get type 1 diabetes, but it is much less likely. We know that to get type 1 diabetes, you need to be susceptible (that we can measure with the genetic test) but also there needs to be some kind of trigger. I don't think having a second child was the trigger, but something was.