My three day old granddaughter was a month early and all’s well except she has no body fat to maintain body temperature and her blood sugar is very high, which has been diagnosed as “transient diabetes”. The doctors say she may grow out of it within 18 months, but I’m finding difficulty finding any information on this.

Neonatal diabetes may be transient or permanent. Because of the rarity of the condition, estimates of the relative frequency of these two components vary between 30% and 50% for the transient form. One way to distinguish the two forms in the early weeks would be to ask the doctors to look for what is called ‘uniparental disomy of chromosome 6’ with which it is associated in most, but not all, of the transient cases (See a previous question on this topic.) The distinction could be important to make early because in the permanent for there may be some associated insufficiency of the exocrine pancreas which is important in producing the enzymes needed for digestion.

DOB