October 2, 2001
Diagnosis and Symptoms
Question from Woonsocket, Rhode Island, USA:
Last week, when my five year old daughter was sick, she was spilling sugar in her urine, but had a normal blood sugar. She is having a fasting blood test next week, and her doctor said they may have caught diabetes really early. Is it normal to spill sugar in the urine? Why did the blood test come back normal if there was sugar in her urine? Do you think that she could have diabetes?
Answer:
It is not normal to spill sugar into urine. However, there are causes other than diabetes that can cause this. Some of the conditions that cause this are pretty harmless, but diabetes needs to be definitively ruled out.
Further blood and urine testing is appropriate at this point as well as watching closely in the future for the typical symptoms of diabetes which include frequent urination, weight loss, and excessive hunger and thirst. I would encourage you to closely follow this and do appropriate testing at the direction of your daughter’s physician.
MSB