My brother is 13 years old and was diagnosed type 1 diabetes 3 months ago. Except for high sugar level, he doesn’t have any symptoms of having diabetes, such as thirst, hunger, dizziness or nausea, and he hasn’t had it before he was diagnosed. Is this a common thing at that period? Information on that in Russia is scarce or there often is nothing on the subject at all. Doctors could not diagnose him for a long time — type 1 or type 2.

It does occasionally happen that diabetes can be picked up without many symptoms, especially in the very early stages of diabetes. However, there must have been something that made the doctors test for glucose. Was your brother’s blood sugar very high or only slightly raised? Very occasionally in children, stressful situations such as illness can result in a higher than normal blood sugar which is only temporary. Also, occasionally glucose can be found in the urine which can be only transient. If the diagnosis was difficult to make, I assume he had a glucose tolerance test, a stimulation test to look at whether he can handle a glucose load normally.

Is he being treated with insulin or diet alone? The answers to these questions might encourage you to perhaps seek confirmation of the diagnosis. Although Type 2 diabetes does occur very occasionally in young children, it is still very unusual, known as MODY. If he has Type 1, which is more likely, he may be in the very early stages, and so if he has been started on insulin, he may have a more prolonged honeymoon period.

JS