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Diabetes Mellitus : Long Term Damage

Decent Essays

Introduction
The term "diabetes mellitus" describes a metabolic disorder of multiple aetiology, characterized by chronic hyperglycaemia with disturbances of carbohydrate, fat and protein metabolism resulting from defects in insulin secretion, insulin action, or both. The effects of diabetes mellitus include long–term damage, dysfunction and failure of various organs (1).
There are two main types of diabetes (2-6); Type 1 diabetes (T1B) usually develops in childhood and adolescence and patients require lifelong insulin injections for survival. Type 2 diabetes (T2B) usually develops in adulthood and is related to obesity, lack of physical activity, and unhealthy diets. This is the more common type of diabetes (representing 90% of diabetic cases worldwide) and treatment may involve lifestyle changes and weight loss alone, or oral medications or even insulin injections. Both main types of Diabetes are caused by a combination of genetic and environmental risk factors (4).
However, there are other rare forms of diabetes that are directly inherited. These include maturity onset diabetes in the young (MODY), and diabetes due to mutations in mitochondrial DNA (7).
In type 1 diabetes, the cause is an absolute deficiency of insulin secretion. Individuals at increased risk of developing this type of diabetes can often be identified by serological evidence of an autoimmune pathologic process occurring in the pancreatic islets and by genetic markers (8). In the other, much more prevalent

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