Hannah’s Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus
Debra Baum
HS 200-04
Unit 4 Capstone Project: Diabetes
Kaplan University
January 7, 2014

Diabetes Mellitus usually occurs in children. It is a chronic metabolic disorder. It is caused when your body’s immune system starts attacking the insulin in your pancreas. A lack of insulin in the blood there is not enough glucose in the cells of the body. Most kids need to take insulin to control their diabetes. Insulin is essential to process carbohydrates, fats, and proteins (Medscape.com). Exactly what causes this no one knows, but there are a lot of speculations. Some of these being viral infection, genetic tendency, development of antibodies, and certain drugs or chemicals.
I am now going to explore some of these risk factors. Some research has come to discover that the immune system is activated when certain viruses are involved. These include coxsackie,,which usually causes hand, mouth and foot disease and the rubella virus according to (news-medical.net pathophysiologies).
Another risk factor is genetics. Type 1 diabetes seems to run in families due to an increase of HLA genotypes. The frequency of a child developing diabetes when their mother has it is 2 to 3%, this however increases to 5 or 6% when their father has it, the risk raises to 30% if both parents have it (mediscape.com.). There is also speculation that lack of vitamin d in the first year of a child’s life can raise the probabilities of a child getting this disease. In the United States they have also stopped using pyrinuron a chemical found in rat poisoning due to the increase of juvenile diabetes (News-medical.net pathophysiologies).
The signs and symptoms when the disease first starts include excessive thirst, feeling tired, and feeling hungry, urinating often, and losing weight without trying. Some of the more severe symptoms can be face being flushed, fruity odor, deep, rapid breathing, nausea, and stomach pain (nih.gov).
For people taking insulin they are also at risk for hypoglycemia. This occurs when the blood sugar falls below 70mg. Signs to watch for are headache, nervousness, shacking, sweating, and weakness (nih.gov).
As the disease progresses the patient can be a t risk for diabetic