Mysterious diabetes variant with 25m cases gets a name

Almost two decades after Dr David Phillips noticed a disturbing trend of young, lean people who were undernourished as children showing up at clinics in northern Ethiopia with diabetes, the unusual form of the disease is finally getting a name.

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Type 5 diabetes affects about 25 million people, mostly in poorer countries, and has been neglected and under-researched, a group of experts wrote in The Lancet Global Health on Sept 18, calling for the development of diagnostic criteria and treatment guidelines.

The patients’ profile is so unusual that, in a country short on healthcare resources like Ethiopia, “there are people who die in a corner of their house because nobody ever thought about them having diabetes”, Dr Phillips, an emeritus professor at the University of Southampton’s MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Centre, said in an interview.