Tweet

One upon a time, there were just 2 known types of diabetes the child one and the adult one.  Sometimes however, patients who have received the diagnosis of being a type 2 diabetic, although they are not exhibiting the classic symptoms associated with being a T2 diabetic such as being obese and may lack ketoacidosis symptoms. Therefore, in some instances, a more accurate diagnosis would be Latent Autoimmune Diabetes of Adulthood or LADA.  LADA accounts for roughly 6-10% of people with diabetes, making it more widespread than Type 1.

LADA has the immune markers that are common to T1 diabetes, but does not require insulin in the early stages, basically it is a mix of both types 1 & 2. LADA is sometime therefore referred to as diabetes type 1.5. People with LADA may have to progress to insulin faster than a normal type 2 diabetic may need.

A GAD antibody test can measure the levels of pancreatic auto-antibodies that are used to identify LADA and can be used to predict the progression towards insulin dependency in the patient.