CALGARY- 15-year-old Jim Stoesz has lived with Type 1 diabetes for most of his young life.
“It has a very large impact on my life. It effects how much I can eat and when I can eat. I have to put a lot more effort into planning my day,” the teen explains.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that happens when the body stops producing insulin. Without enough insulin, blood sugar levels can rise to dangerous levels, and over time high blood sugar can lead to serious nerve damage.
“I’ve heard from doctors and from my parents that poorly managed diabetes can lead to circulation issues that may even lead to amputations of hands and feet,” says Stoesz.
Get weekly health news
Neuropathy is a common side effect of diabetes impacting 90 per cent of people with Type 1 and Type 2 forms of the disease. Usually, symptoms of neuropathy don’t appear until patients are adults but because past research has found nerve damage may actually begin in childhood, Calgary researchers are looking to find a better way to detect the problem early on.
“This specific study is looking at a new way to detect nerve damage in children with Type 1 diabetes,” explains Dr. Daniele Pacaud, a pediatric endocrinologist with the Alberta Children’s Hospital. “We hope that by screening for the long term complications early on, we can actually have some influence on the rate of development of those complications and eventually even prevent some of those complications as well.”
Presently, doctors use something called a nerve conduction test to diagnose nerve damage. It measures how nerves respond to pulses of static electricity.
“The test can be a little bit uncomfortable and scary for some of the children to go through, and it can also be time consuming because the test requires a specialized lab.”
This study will investigate whether an eye test could be an effective alternative to the nerve conduction test in diagnosing early stage neuropathy. The Corneal Confocal Microscopy (CCM) test looks for damage to nerves in the cornea of the eye. The test can be done during an eye exam and if found to be accurate, could one day be incorporated into the annual eye exam all diabetic children receive.
Researchers are still recruiting study participants and are in need of healthy control subjects. Children between the ages of eight and 18 who do not have diabetes may be eligible to participate. For more information , contact study coordinator, Claire Gougeon at 403-955-8866 or by e-mail: Claire.gougeon@albertahealthservices.ca
Comments