June 20, 2000
Thyroid
Question from Aberdeen, Washington, USA:
I have gone through most of your previous questions and noticed that everyone who has a question about the connection of diabetes and a thyroid disorder usually already has diabetes and is just learning of thyroid disorders.
My daughter, age 5.5, weight 45 pounds, has congenital hypothyroidism and takes thyroid hormone replacement therapy daily. Within the last two months, she has had 2 bladder infections. She started with the same symptoms of a bladder infection again last weekend and was running a high fever. I figured it was another bladder infection. It turned out to be negative, but she did have an infection in her throat.
When they did the urine test, she had a high content of sugar in her urine. They sent me to do a blood test and the results of that were 134 with 117-120 being normal range, according to the lab. I’m not really sure what that means. There is a history of diabetes in both parents’ families. What is the likelihood of it being diabetes? And how high does the blood sugar content have to be before I become even more concerned?
Answer:
I’m unaware of a connection between childhood diabetes and congenital hypothyroidism.
Your daughter needs to be monitored closely for diabetes as she had a positive urine test for glucose which usually is only present in children with diabetes. I hope your physician has recommended some further testing for diabetes which may mean repeated urine tests or perhaps a blood test. A normal blood sugar is generally between 65-110 (although each lab may have slightly different ranges of normal). There are some other tests that may help determine if this represents diabetes in your daughter — I would encourage you to closely follow up this result with your daughter’s physician.
MSB
