July 12, 2005
Diagnosis and Symptoms
Question from Ash Grove, Missouri, USA:
My 11 year old recently was seen at an emergency room for some symptoms he was having (wall pain in his chest) and they did some blood work at the time. Everything was fine, except the doctor said his blood sugar was nine points above normal and that we should follow up on this. He is overweight, around 150 pounds, at 4 feet, 11 inches tall. He does seem to drink a lot and he loves to eat sweets as much as we will let him. He has a grandmother on his dad’s side with diabetes controlled by diet and his grandfather (my dad) was diagnosed with it about five years ago. He controls his with diet, also.
What is a normal blood sugar for my son? Should we have him do that two hour test they do with the sugary drink? He did have some blood work a couple of months ago at a physical and the nurse practitioner had him fast the night before the blood work and his blood sugar was normal at that time. I don’t know if I should get a pediatrician for him to follow up on this or go back to the nurse practitioner.
Answer:
Many children, at the time of illness, may have a high blood sugar. This is, fortunately, not correlated to developing future diabetes. Your son’s blood sugars should be less than 200 mg/dl [11 mmol/L] after he’s eaten and less than 126 mg/dl [7.0 mmol/L] fasting to be normal. I, personally, wouldn’t pursue further investigation of a single high blood sugar at the time of an illness.I would, however, work with him at losing weight (or at least not continuing to gain weight quickly) by encouraging smaller portion sizes, particularly for higher calorie foods. At 4 feet 11 inches and 150 pounds, his body mass index is 22 kg/m2, at the 95th percentile for age, which makes him overweight.
LAD
