I am 30 years old, have had type�1 diabetes for less than a year, and I caught this horrible disease, when I started to take prednisone [a form of steroids] for severe arthritis. The side effects of prednisone include diabetes, and also eventually death.

If anyone of you knows anyone who is taking this medication please tell them to slowly stop this medicine as soon as possible. That is how got this horrible diabetes. How can get rid of diabetes from my body entirely?

In view of your age, I think it is possible that your joint problems were due to rheumatoid arthritis rather than some form of degenerative arthritis and that the diabetes also has an autoimmune basis, which nowadays is called Late-onset Autoimmune Diabetes of Adulthood (LADA).

If this is so, you should discuss the matter with your doctor. Prednisone, whilst it might indeed have precipitated the final stages of insulin producing cell destruction, really only hastened a process that had been going on for many years. This issue does have an important bearing on the possibility of a cure. In this connection, there are growing expectations that it will be possible to develop surrogate cells that will get around the problem of the shortage of islet cell donors as well protocols whereby permanent graft tolerance can be induced very rapidly to avoid the present post transplant need for lifetime immunosuppression. However,

However, a ‘cure’ will take at least a decade. In the meantime, it is important to take every advantage of new insulins to maintain really good control.

DOB
Additional comments from Dr. David Schwartz:

I would very strongly advise that patients receiving these types of steroid medications only decrease their doses under direct medical supervision. The body can become “dependent” on supplemental steroids and stop manufacturing their own! Inadequate amounts of certain steroids (like hydrocortisone and prednisone, which is a synthetic form of hydrocortisone) could have the dramatic effect of severe illness and even sudden death.

DS