Should doctors screen all kids for type 1 diabetes?

Millions worldwide live with type 1 diabetes, and for most the diagnosis came as a shock, following mysterious symptoms such as thirst and weight loss. But diabetes specialists have long known that certain blood tests can foretell the disease years earlier. That has left the field wrestling with a difficult question: Should healthy children get these blood tests, and would knowing about incipient diabetes help them? Now, as a first wave of studies indicates such testing can prevent life-threatening complications at diagnosis , and with a new treatment to delay disease onset, the answers are tipping toward “yes.” Mass screening studies are expanding throughout North America and Europe, and in September 2023, Italy became the first country to pass a law that aims to make screening, via finger-prick blood tests, available to all children. At a meeting in Florence last week, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) presented draft recommendations on caring for those who test positive. Mass screening is “a totally different way of thinking about type 1 diabetes,” says Emily Sims, a pediatric endocrinologist at the Indiana University School of Medicine. It relies not on signs of diabetes itself, such as high blood sugar, but on something of a crystal ball: autoantibodies in the blood that signal immune attacks on insulin-secreting cells in the pancreas. Once a child falls ill with full-blown diabetes, and typically needs ins...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news