Ten things you never knew about... diabetes

Today is World Diabetes Day, marking the birthday of Sir Frederick Banting (1891-1941), who in 1923 was one of the discoverers of insulin for which he shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

1. Banting is still the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

2. “Diabetes” is the Greek word for “siphon”. It refers to the copious urine flow when the disease is uncontrolled.

3. The Greek physician Aretaeus of Cappadocia, who gave the disease its name in the first century BC, thought diabetes was caused by snakebite.

4. The word “Insulin” comes from the Latin for island, as it is produced by clusters of cells in the pancreas known as the Islets of Langerhans.

5. The number of people diagnosed to be suffering from diabetes has quadrupled since 1980.

6. About 2.2 million people in the UK have diabetes with perhaps a million more undiagnosed.

7. Diabetes causes high blood glucose levels which can affect the eyes, kidneys, heart or other organs.

8. The oldest known reference to the disease is in an Egyptian medical papyrus from 1500BC.

9. Diabetes is the direct cause of about 1.5 million deaths a year worldwide.

10. “Diabetes” is an anagram of “beadiest” or “best idea”.