My 10-year-old son, who had ADHD and also sleepwalks, has started going to the bathroom several times a night, many times not in the bathroom, which may be due to sleepwalking. I have had type 1 diabetes since the age of six, almost 33 years. My son has been tested in clinical trials for diabetes and did not pass the first portion, however, the second portion of the testing six years ago came back negative. He has not lost any weight, that I noticed. He seems to maintain weight, however, the waking at night and urinating a lot has me concerned. I did a fasting blood sugar with a meter this morning and it was 118 mg/dl [6.6 mmol/L]. Could he possibly have type 1 diabetes?

Although 118 mg/dl [6.6 mmol/L] is an abnormal fasting blood glucose test, it is not high enough to make a diagnosis. I would suggest that you contact a local pediatric diabetologist and have further testing done. It also would make sense to check islet cell, GAD-65 and IA2 antibodies. If negative, this won’t provide much information but, if positive, this would indicate already present pancreas antibodies and an autoimmune “attack” in process. It also would be reasonable to check before and after meal blood glucose readings for several days to determine what level of glucose he is running, with normal values before meals expected to be less than 100 mg/dl [5.6 mmol/L] and one to two hours after meals expected to be less than 126 mg/dl [7.0 mmol/L] (some would say less than 140 mg/dl [7/8 mmol/L]). The more normal, the more reassuring; the more abnormal, the more you should see a pediatric diabetes specialist. The general risk for a first degree relative is approximately 2 to 6%.

SB