February 26, 2006
Diagnosis and Symptoms
Question from Phoenix, Arizona, USA:
I have two children. My five year old daughter has type 1 diabetes. My two year old son has starting showing possible signs of it. Lately, he has been excessively thirsty. I gave him five ounces of low carbohydrate apple juice (about 5 grams of carbohydrates) and he inhaled it. It dawned on me that he has had some of the symptoms of diabetes so I checked his blood sugar; it was 160 mg/dl [8.9 mmol/L] about two minutes after the juice. Is this normal for a non-diabetic? I know that normal is 80 to 120 mg/dl [4.4 to 6.7 mmol/L]. Could the juice have caused his blood sugar to rise so quickly? He hadn’t consumed anything else for over four hours.
Answer:
If you checked your son’s blood sugar with a home meter, the value you got after juice with is within the physiological variation. Nevertheless, you may want to check him for fasting plasma value and, if possible, for autoantibodies (GADA and IA2) as well. These are tests to ask your doctor about.
MS
