Recent classification of diabetes mellitus

Abstract

The right classification for diabetes mellitus (DM) allows a more adequate treatment and comprises four categories: type 1 DM, type 2 DM, other types, and gestational diabetes. Assigning a type of diabetes to an individual often depends on the circumstances present at the time of diagnosis, and many diabetic individuals do not easily fit into a single class. Diabetes mellitus and lesser forms of glucose intolerance, particularly impaired glucose tolerance, can now be found in almost every population in the world and epidemiological evidence suggests that, without effective prevention and control programmes, diabetes will likely continue to increase globally. These findings were confirmed in a similar study in India, in which the FPG and 2-h PG were each strongly and equally associated with retinopathy. For both the FPG and the 2-h PG, the prevalence of retinopathy was markedly higher above the point of intersection of the two components of the bimodal frequency distribution (FPG = 129 mg/dl [7.2 mmol/l] and 2- h PG = 207 mg/dl [11.5 mmol/l]). In the NHANES III, 2,821 individuals aged 40-74 years received an OGTT, a measurement of HbAlc, and an assessment of retinopathy by fundus photography.