June 8, 2009
Diagnosis and Symptoms
Question from Raleigh, North Carolina, USA:
My 13-year-old has had type 1 for five years. His nine-year-old brother occasionally asks to test his own blood sugar, about once a month. He consistently has a fasting of about 110 mg/dl [6.1 mmol/L], ranging up to 120 mg/dl [6.7 mmol/L] and, once in a while, down to 98 mg/dl [5.4 mmol/L]. He had negative antibodies about two years ago. He is slim and very active. Should I conclude this is just normal for him or should I be worried? On the same meter with the same strips, my fasting is typically in the 80s mg/dl [4.5 to 4.9 mmol/L]. My older son’s diabetes came on with dramatic weight loss, constant urination, etc., so we have assumed that so long as we didn’t see big symptoms, we shouldn’t worry.
Answer:
Those values are definitely borderline abnormal for fasting glucose. You double checked the meter so it does not seem like a technical error. If he were nervous, a bit of adrenalin could spike the glucose levels and this doesn’t mean anything if that were the explanation. I would suggest running a two or three day profile – before and one to two hours after each meal and then sharing this with your diabetes team so that they can review in some more detail. They may want to repeat the antibody levels and perhaps even get an A1c or other tests.
SB
