Are there as many as five diabetes types?

To divide adult onset diabetes into two types (Type 1 and Type 2) is probably too simple. There may be as many as five.

Classically, patients have been labelled as having Type 1 diabetes when the body’s immune system attacks insulin cells in the pancreas, leaving it unable to produce insulin at all.

Type 2 often appears in adulthood when the body stops producing enough insulin or stops responding to it properly.

This type is often linked to obesity and lifestyle factors.

The vast majority of people with diabetes – about 90% – have the latter condition.

But based on their analysis of the medial records of thousands of adults with diabetes in Scandinavia, the authors of the new study have suggested that it’s more accurate to divide diabetes into five “clusters”.

The first of these, severe autoimmune diabetes, corresponds to Type 1, while the rest are “sub-types” of Type 2.

Two are “mild” forms, while the others are “severe” and display some of the symptoms of Type 1.

This diagnostic refinement, say the researchers in The Lancet, would enable treatment to be more tailored to each patient, and help doctors identify patients at risk of specific complications, such as diabetic eye disease.

The big question now, though, is whether their findings apply to non-scandinavians.