Treatment
LADA often does not require insulin at the time of diagnosis and may even be managed with changes in lifestyle in its early stages such as exercise, eating right, and, if optional, weight loss. However, some clinicians believe that insulin should be started at onset or as soon as possible, rather than using sulfonylureas or other diabetes pills for initial treatment. Moreover, it is not clear whether early insulin therapy is of benefit to the remaining beta islet cells.
Initially, a person with LADA may respond to oral diabetes medications, eating right and lifestyle changes, although beta cells continue to be destroyed and LADA patients should be closely monitored. Some studies have demonstrated that the use of sulfonylureas and the insulin-sensitizing drug metformin, may increase the risk of severe metabolic disorder in persons with LADA. When blood glucose can no longer be managed through lifestyle and medications, daily insulin injections will be required.
80% of persons initially diagnosed with type 2 but test positive for GAD (an indication of LADA) progress to insulin dependency within 6 years (some sources say between 3–12 years after diagnosis). Those who test positive for both GAD and IA2, however, will progress more rapidly to insulin dependence.
Living with any chronic illness is stressful, and patients with diabetes, let alone LADA, may be more prone to depression and eating disorders as a result. Counseling, therapy, and participation in support groups can play an important and positive role in the lives of persons with LADA.
Part of diabetes therapy should include patient education about diet, exercise, stress management, and handling their diabetes on "sick" days. Patients need to understand how to manage their diabetes, as well as how to recognize, treat, and prevent hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) and hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) and how to give injections of insulin and glucagon. Blood glucose levels should be checked not less than 3-4 times per day when a patient is insulin dependent and, often, at least once during the night.
Read more about this topic: Diabetes Type 1.5
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“A regular council was held with the Indians, who had come in on their ponies, and speeches were made on both sides through an interpreter, quite in the described mode,—the Indians, as usual, having the advantage in point of truth and earnestness, and therefore of eloquence. The most prominent chief was named Little Crow. They were quite dissatisfied with the white man’s treatment of them, and probably have reason to be so.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art.”
—Hippocrates (c. 460–c. 370 B.C.)
“If the study of all these sciences, which we have enumerated, should ever bring us to their mutual association and relationship, and teach us the nature of the ties which bind them together, I believe that the diligent treatment of them will forward the objects which we have in view, and that the labor, which otherwise would be fruitless, will be well bestowed.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)