Classification of diabetes is a group of metabolic diseases that stem from impaired insulin production, absorption, or a combination of both and invoke either high or low blood glucose levels. Over time, patients will suffer extensive damage to nerves, blood vessels, and organs, provoking other life altering conditions, such as coronary artery disease, and liver and kidney damage. Diabetes classification consists of two main categories, type 1 and type 2 diabetes mellitus.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the pancreas’ beta cells are defective and attack its own insulin producing cells. Researchers are uncertain of its origin, but theorize that a virus or infection could perhaps be the cause. An individual of any age can get type 1, but it usually occurs in children and adolescents.
Type 2 diabetes is different in that there are no damaged cells and sometimes the pancreas is able to manufacture insulin, but the body is resistant to the available insulin. Other times, the pancreas does not make insulin at all or makes an inadequate amount. In addition, the majority of type 2 diabetics are adults, although it can affect anyone. There are varying degrees of type 2 diabetes, but doctors believe that cases are brought on by environmental factors such as sedentary lifestyle, poor diet, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and uncontrolled blood sugar.
Classification of Diabetes – A Third Type?
Some researchers consider there to be a third type of diabetes, while other doctors categorize it as a form of type 2 diabetes. Gestational diabetes classification is any degree of glucose intolerance that is first onset or recognized during pregnancy. Usually a woman will be diagnosed with gestational diabetes mellitus around her twenty-fourth week of pregnancy or later, but the condition usually resolves itself after delivery. The woman, however, has increased risk for developing type 2 diabetes later in life.
Doctors do note that a newly pregnant woman, who shows symptoms of diabetes and has not been previously diagnosed, would meet the criteria for overt, not gestational diabetes. This statement simply means that the woman has been diagnosed with diabetes around the time of conception.
Classification of Diabetes
The classification “diabetes”also has a subset of diabetes, which are ranked by letter according to the woman who pioneered the research, Priscilla White. Her method, the diabetes white classification uses two groups to explain the disease. She uses overt diabetes (class b)and gestational diabetes (class a) for the main two groups and then further breaks down overt diabetes by age of onset, duration of illness, and additional diseases (classes a,b,c,d,e,f,h,r,rh,t) and gestational diabetes by whether it is controlled by diet or by insulin (classes a1 and a2).
