Experts identify terrifying type 5 diabetes that is killing 'young and thin people'
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Diabetes experts have officially recognised a deadly new type of the disease that affects young, slim people.
Known as type 5 diabetes, it is believed to affect up to 25 million people globally and is triggered by not eating enough food.
Diabetes occurs when the body either can't produce enough insulin—a hormone that controls the level of sugar in the blood—or use it effectively.
Reports suggest the newly-discovered condition develops in genetically vulnerable youngsters because malnourishment then harms their ability to secrete insulin.
The experts researching the condition say it has mainly been seen in slim teenagers and young adults in low and middle-income countries.
Speaking at the World Diabetes Congress in Thailand this month, Professor Meredith Hawkins, an expert in endocrinology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, said type 5 'has historically been vastly underdiagnosed and poorly understood'.
'Official recognition of type 5 diabetes by the International Diabetes Federation is an important step toward raising awareness of a health problem that is so devastating to so many people,' she added.
'Doctors are still unsure how to treat these patients, who often don't live for more than a year after diagnosis.
'This finding has revolutionised how we think about this condition and how we should treat it.'
The term first appeared in medical reports in Jamaica in 1955.
Three decades later, the World Health Organisation (WHO) officially classified 'malnutrition-related diabetes mellitus' as a distinct diabetes type.
But the UN agency then dropped the category in 1999 due to a lack of evidence.
Professor Hawkins said she had first learnt of malnutrition-related diabetes in 2005 after attending global health meetings but medics were left 'confused' by the cause.
'Doctors from various countries told me they were seeing many patients with an unusual form of diabetes,' she said.
'The patients were young and thin, which suggested that they had type 1 diabetes, which can be managed with insulin injections to regulate blood sugar levels.
'But insulin didn't help these patients and in some cases caused dangerously low blood sugar.
'Nor did these patients seem to have type 2 diabetes, which is typically associated with obesity. It was very confusing.'
Experts now believe type 5 diabetes is a rare, inherited form of the disease that develops in those who are malnourished in their early teens or 20s and have a genetic mutation passed from parent to child.
If a parent has the affected gene, their children have a 50 per cent chance of also being carriers.
Reports suggest it mainly affects young men in Asia and Africa.
Professor Hawkins noted that to manage type 5 diabetes, the patients should include much higher amounts of protein and lower amounts of carbohydrates in their diet.
Evidence has long shown that diets higher in fibre and proteins can help patients with diabetes to slow down the digestion of carbs and delay their absorption into the blood.
This helps to prevent spikes in blood sugar levels after eating.
The chronic condition diabetes now affects 4.6 million people in the UK — a record high, according to the charity Diabetes UK.
It can be a deadly illness and it costs the NHS roughly £10 billion a year to treat, with patients at higher risk of damage to organs, nerves and cells.
It also dramatically increases the risk of heart disease, kidney disease, amputations and sight loss.
Type 1 diabetes, which is not lifestyle related, occurs when the pancreas cannot produce insulin, causing sugar levels in the patient's blood to become dangerously high.
Type 2 diabetes, meanwhile, occurs when the body doesn't make enough insulin or the insulin it makes doesn't work properly.
This hormone is needed to bring down blood sugar levels.
Symptoms of the condition, which is diagnosed with a blood test, include excessive thirst, tiredness and needing to urinate more often. But many people have no signs.
In recent years, doctors have warned patients with elevated blood sugar that they are at a higher risk of a type 2 diabetes diagnosis, the most common form of the condition.
It is linked with obesity and is typically diagnosed in middle age. Studies have also shown that fat over-spills from the liver into the pancreas can trigger the condition.
In some cases patients are told they have prediabetes. This affects 6.3 million people—nearly one in eight adults in England—and typically has no symptoms.
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