I’m grateful to Manny Hernandez over at TuDiabetes for working to kick off a special awareness campaign this week just for adults diagnosed with what used to be known as “juvenile diabetes.” At the time I was diagnosed, the doctors around me were sure it must be type 2 diabetes. I was in my late ’30s, after all. Never mind that I’d shrunk down to skeletal size and gone into DKA! But I’m getting ahead of myself here.
About LADA Awareness Week:
In order to “help increase understanding and reduce misdiagnosis of latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (LADA),” Manny’s nonprofit Diabetes
Hands Foundation (DHF) and dLife are kicking off the first annual LADA Awareness Week for the D-community from Monday, Oct. 18 through Friday, Oct. 24, 2010.
DHF and dLife, along with other participating advocacy groups and people living with diabetes, are posting important information, tools, and tips for recognizing and diagnosing LADA.
If you want to participate, you can grab the badge for your own website at either of those resource sites.
Facts About LADA:
LADA stands for latent autoimmune diabetes in adults. It is a slowly-progressing form of type 1 diabetes, sometimes called type 1.5, that is diagnosed in adulthood. Like ‘regular’ type 1 diabetes, the autoimmune process of LADA destroys cells in the pancreas, requiring eventual insulin treatment.
According to dLife, an estimated 10 percent of Americans with diabetes have LADA (which surprised the heck out of me, I must say).
“LADA is different and distinct from type 2 diabetes, yet people with LADA are often misdiagnosed because both occur in adulthood and share similar symptoms. Over
time, this misdiagnosis can result in out-of-control blood sugars, which can lead to serious and life-threatening diabetic complications.”
The real goal of LADA Awareness Week is to help misdiagnosed patients recognize the signs of LADA and talk to their doctor about testing and treatment.
For a real life example, you can read the misdiagnosis story of our very own D-blogger friend Cherise Shockley, recently published in Diabetic Living magazine.
Thoughts From A (Wannabe?) LADA:
There’s nothing quite like feeling healthy all your life, and then suddenly becoming insulin-dependent to shake up your world. In an earlier attempt to raise awareness, I wrote a little proclamation called “All About LADA” back in 2008 — still worth printing out and pasting to your fridge!
But you should know that there’s a lot of confusion about LADA even in the medical and research world: how exactly is it defined? Read a fantastic guest post by journalist Catherine Price on that dilemma here.
That being said, I became unsure as to whether my late-but-violent-onset type 1 really qualifies as LADA at all. Nevermind, to me the acronym just means that I had this whole non-diabetic life until almost age 40, and then suddenly landed in the hospital and was thrust into the lifestyle of a person with type 1 diabetes. It changed everything.
Read ‘My Own Definition of LADA‘ for details. If you read the comments, you can see that a bunch of us late-diagnosed types decided to go rogue. If the definition of LADA is gonna be interpreted so narrowly, maybe we need a new acronym, like perhaps:
OATNIES = Older Adults That Need Insulin Everyday Suddenly
ATNIES = Adults That Need Insulin Everyday Suddenly (dumping the ‘older’)
or
RODA = Rapid Onset Diabetes in Adults
??
Whatever you want to call it, please take this week to help spread the word about us much-ignored grown-ups whose pancreases poop out on them. Horton, please hear our who!
Thanks for posting this, Amy. Misdiagnosis of adult-onset Type 1 diabetes as Type 2 diabetes is such a huge problem! The numbers with LADA are higher than 10% of diabetes–it’s actually 10% of “Type 2″ diabetics who are antibody-positive and in fact have Type 1/LADA. In the UK Prospective Diabetes Study (UKPDS), which looked at tight control in 5,000 Type 2 diabetics, 10% of the people diagnosed with Type 2 were antibody positive and in fact had Type 1 (and weren’t eligible for a Type 2 study). Adult-onset Type 1 diabetes is far more common than childhood-onset Type 1 diabetes.
Makes me wonder if my ancestors (grandpa and great grandpa) who had Type II (or, at least got db as older adults) may have had LADA, since at least my grampa took insulin (via glass syringe that he boiled). I am the only juvenile-onset db in my family line, but there’s lots of Type II, er, LADA???
Thx for posting this.
So I wonder if I am considered a LADA since I was diagnosed at the age of 28? I was put on insulin right away but when I saw your post I wondered if the age means I am LADA? Thanks
What I wonder is if the there is any difference in the etiology between type 1 and LADA. I don’t quite understand why people don’t just call it type 1. Does a “LADA” or “type 1.5″-like disease progression occur in kids/teenagers? Or are more adults just inaccurately diagnosed with type 2 because it is the more common type of adult-onset diabetes?
Thank you for getting this information out as my business blog covers health and wellness issues. I’m a type 1 diabetci and the more information of this quality the better for all of us.