A new type of diabetes has been recognized – and it has nothing with obesity

Malnutrition is key

The condition is closely associated with malnutrition and low body weight.

Especially young and young adults from low and middle-income countries are affected.

What separates type 5 from other forms is a serious impaired ability to produce insulin.

A defect in the Beta cells in the pancreas, which has not previously been recognized as its own type of disease.

Professor Meredith Hawkins of Albert Einstein College of Medicine was among the first to seriously began to document the condition.

Already in 2005, she encountered reports of « strange » diabetic cases, and in 2010 she founded the Global Diabetes Institute to research this type.

According to Hawkins, many patients with type 5 diabetes survive no more than a year after diagnosis.

A large part of the problem is that doctors are still uncertain about how to treat the disease properly.

Over -treatment with insulin can do more harm than good, and therefore it requires a whole new approach.

Preliminary recommendations are a diet with more protein and fewer carbohydrates, as well as focus on correcting deficiencies in micronutrients.

But there is a need for much more research, now that there is finally an international mandate to put in place.

With about 25 million affected worldwide, type 5 diabetes is more widespread than many believe, and now there is finally a name and a focus that can trigger a real change.