People with Type 1 Diabetes are more than three times more likely to develop Multiple Sclerosis (MS) than are those without diabetes, new research from Denmark shows. In addition, the two diseases appear to be linked, albeit to a weaker extent, within families. Both Type 1 Diabetes and MS are auto-immune diseases, in which the body mounts an aberrant immune response against its own tissues - attacking insulin-producing cells in the case of diabetes, and the myelin sheath surrounding neurons in MS. The new, population-based study is not the first to reveal an association between Type 1 diabetes and MS. However, previous evidence had come from relatively small numbers of patients. As reported in the Archives of Neurology, Dr. Nete M. Nielsen, from the Staten’s Serum Institute in Copenhagen, and colleagues assessed the occurrence of MS in 6078 patients with Type 1 Diabetes over more than a decade of follow-up. In addition, the researchers evaluated the presence of Type 1 Diabetes in 14,77...

A diet that includes lots of low-fat dairy products may lower the risk of Type 2 diabetes in women, new research suggests. Although a series of recent studies suggests that a high level of dairy foods in the diet may lower the risk of being overweight or developing insulin resistance syndrome, studies that have examined the link between these factors and diabetes risk are sparse, Dr. Simin Liu, from the University of California Los Angeles School of Public Health and colleagues note. They therefore looked for the relationship between Type 2 diabetes and dietary levels of dairy foods and calcium in 37,183 women in the Women's Health Study. A total of 1,603 women developed diabetes during an average follow-up of 10 years. "The most important finding is that women who consumed more low-fat dairy foods tended to experience a lower risk of Type 2 diabetes in a period of 10 years," Liu told. After adjusting for potentially confounding factors such as weight, physical activity,...

Diabetics are at risk of developing cardiovascular disease, one of the world's biggest killers, 15 years earlier than other people, according to a scientist. So a person with diabetes aged 40 has the same odds of having a stroke or heart attack as a healthy person of 55. "Diabetes confers the same risk of cardiovascular disease as ageing 15 years," said Gillian Booth of the Institute of Clinical Evaluation Sciences in Toronto, in an interview. But she added that not all people with diabetes are at high risk. Those that are do not reach the high level until they are in their early to late 40s. Diabetes is a chronic illness that occurs when the body does not produce enough, or effectively use insulin. Men with diabetes usually go from the moderate to high risk category at about 41 years old while in women it is 48.In the general population it occurs 15 years later. "People with diabetes certainly are at a high risk of getting heart disease and there is a shift towards...

Kids with Type 1 Diabetes often showed Symptoms of depression and are common among children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes, according to researchers from Harvard Medical School, Boston. Dr. Lori M. B. Laffel and colleagues conducted a study with 145 such youngsters, who had had diabetes for an average of eight years, and their parents. The researchers used a 27-item self-report questionnaire to assess depressive symptoms, which was completed by the children as well as by the parents with regard to their children. The investigators also used other questionnaires to measure family conflict specifically related to diabetes management, to assess emotional responses to the children's high and low blood glucose values, and to determine the parents' perceived burden related to diabetes care. As reported in the medical journal Diabetes Care, Laffel's team found that 15.2 percent of the young diabetics had symptoms of depression, which was also tied to poorer control of blood ...