Type 1 Diabetes Patients Still Produce Some Insulin: Study

Scientists at Uppsala University in Sweden have found the production of some amount of insulin in almost half of the patients that have had type 1 diabetes for more than ten years.

- Uppsala University

Type 1 diabetes also known as insulin-dependent diabetes, a chronic disease that occurs during childhood or adolescence, has previously been considered to result in full loss of the patients' insulin production. However, by the use of sophisticated insulin assays that have been introduced in recent years, this has now been shown not to be true in all cases.

The study involved more than a hundred type 1 diabetes patients at Uppsala University Hospital who were investigated for the production of insulin. It was wound that almost half of the adult patients that have had type 1 diabetes for at least ten years still produced some amounts of insulin.