Juvenile Diabetes and Recent Scientific Discoveries

Juvenile diabetes, also known as type I diabetes, details that your body cannot metabolize glucose and it causes your blood sugar levels to be high. In order to transport glucose into the cell your body needs insulin, which is produced by the pancreas. Insulin is actually a hormone and if your body does not produce or secrete enough insulin you have juvenile diabetes. Ultimately what happens is your bodies immune system attacks the beta cells in the pancreas that produce insulin. It is called juvenile diabetes because most children between the ages of 3 and 14 develop this type of diabetes though some adults over 30 have been found to come down with this type of diabetes.

Some symptoms associated with juvenile diabetes include blurry eye sight, tingling or losing feeling in your feet, dry, itchy skin, slow healing sores, losing weight, being hungry, tired, urinating frequently, and being very thirst. It is very easy to determine if you have juvenile diabetes, as you just need a blood test. Juvenile diabetes means that you will need to take insulin for the rest of your life, as there is currently no cure.

There a have been some recent discoveries in the field of juvenile diabetes. It has been found that children that eventually develop juvenile diabetes have disturbances in amino acid and lipid metabolism before they develop juvenile diabetes. This discovery means that it may be possible to prevent juvenile diabetes from developing. Before this discovery the only way to identify those that may develop juvenile diabetes was the development of autoimmunity to beta cells. When this is noticed many times it is too late to prevent juvenile diabetes.

Metabolomics is currently being used to investigate juvenile diabetes. Metabolomics looks at chemicals in biofluids, tissues and cells that relate to the environmental conditions. These metabolic chemical will change depending on lifestyle, nutrition, age and microbic environment.