50 Fun Facts About Diabetes

The word 'diabetes' comes from a Greek word meaning what?

Apollonius of Memphis is credited with first using it around 230 BCE.

Thomas Willis added 'mellitus' to the name in 1675 after noticing what about patients' urine?

Ancient Greeks, Chinese, Egyptians and Indians had all noticed the sweetness; in India the disease was 'honey urine' because it attracted ants.

Which Egyptian manuscript from around 1500 BCE mentions 'too great emptying of the urine'?

It even recommends a drink to take for the condition.

Type 2 of the condition was formerly known by what name?

Rates have risen sharply since 1960 in step with obesity, and it is now increasingly diagnosed in children.

Which two Canadians isolated and purified insulin in Toronto in 1921 and 1922?

They worked in John Macleod's laboratory, with biochemist James Collip helping to purify the extract.

For how much was the patent for insulin sold to the University of Toronto?

Banting and Macleod were reluctant to patent it at all on ethical grounds.

Banting shared his 1923 Nobel money with Best after the prize went to Banting and whom?

Banting was 32, making him the youngest ever laureate in physiology or medicine.

How old was Banting when he won the Nobel Prize, making him its youngest medicine laureate?

He was killed in 1941 when his plane crashed in Newfoundland after both engines failed.

Leonard Thompson, the first person injected with insulin in January 1922, was how old?

He lived until 1935; before insulin, diabetic children survived only a couple of years on near-starvation diets.

Elizabeth, one of the first Americans treated with insulin in 1922, was the daughter of which statesman?

Before insulin she was kept alive by Dr Frederick Allen's starvation diet.

The word 'insulin' comes from the Latin insula, meaning what?

It is made in the islets of the pancreas discovered by Paul Langerhans.

Which German medical student discovered the pancreatic islets that bear his name in 1869?

He described 'islands of clear cells' in his doctoral thesis at the Berlin Pathological Institute.

Which cells in the pancreatic islets produce insulin?

Alpha cells make glucagon, which raises blood sugar; a healthy adult has about a million islets.

Roughly what share of the pancreas by volume is made up of the hormone-producing islets?

They nonetheless receive 10 to 15 percent of the organ's blood flow.

The word 'pancreas' comes from Greek words meaning what?

Herophilus first identified the organ around 300 BC; it sits behind the stomach and is 99 percent digestive tissue.

Type 1 diabetes is what kind of condition?

The immune system destroys the insulin-producing beta cells; it accounts for 5 to 10 percent of cases and was once called juvenile diabetes.

Roughly what proportion of all diabetes cases are type 2?

It was formerly called adult-onset diabetes and is driven mainly by obesity and lack of exercise.

Per the International Diabetes Federation, roughly how many people had diabetes worldwide in 2021?

That is up from an estimated 108 million in 1980.

Gestational diabetes develops during what?

It usually resolves after delivery, though the child faces a higher long-term risk of type 2.

The HbA1c blood test reflects average blood sugar over roughly what period?

Sugar attaches to haemoglobin in red cells by glycation; a result above 6.5% points to diabetes.

Hypoglycaemia is usually defined as blood glucose below what level?

That is 3.9 mmol/L; the fix is 10 to 20 grams of fast carbohydrate.

A person's breath in diabetic ketoacidosis often smells of what?

Some describe it as pear drops; deep gasping 'Kussmaul' breathing is another sign.

Metformin, the main first-line drug for type 2 diabetes, traces its origins to research on which plant?

Galega officinalis was a folk remedy for centuries; the drug was introduced in France in 1957 as Glucophage, 'glucose eater'.

In 2023 metformin ranked where among the most prescribed medications in the United States?

More than 85 million prescriptions were written for it that year.

Which company sold the first commercially available biosynthetic human insulin, Humulin, in 1982?

Insulin was the first protein made by recombinant DNA; Eli Lilly had also been first to mass-produce it in the 1920s.

In which year did Frederick Sanger work out a hormone's full amino acid structure?

It was the first protein ever fully sequenced; the molecule has 51 amino acids in two chains.

How many amino acids make up a molecule of human insulin?

The A-chain has 21 and the B-chain 30, joined by disulfide bonds.

In which year did the International Diabetes Federation and WHO launch World Diabetes Day?

It falls on 14 November, Frederick Banting's birthday, and the UN adopted a resolution on it in 2006.

Which pair discovered the pancreas's role in diabetes in 1889 by removing a dog's pancreas?

The dog developed the classic excessive urination and thirst.

Which physician wrote the earliest surviving detailed account of diabetes, in the 2nd century CE?

Indian physicians of the 6th century separately called it madhumeha, honey urine.

Home blood glucose meters were first marketed for patients in about which year?

Leland Clark and Ann Lyons had built the first glucose enzyme electrode in 1962; the Ames Reflectance Meter served hospitals in the 1970s.

The first insulin pump prototype, built by Arnold Kadish in the 1960s, was worn how?

It was too bulky to sell; the first commercial pump, the Biostator, arrived in 1976.

The GLP-1 drug class that includes semaglutide grew out of research into the venom of which animal?

John Eng isolated the substance in 1992 after learning the lizard eats only once or twice a year.

Semaglutide is sold for weight management under which brand name?

The same molecule is Ozempic for diabetes; it was approved in the US in 2017.

Novo Nordisk, the insulin giant whose value topped its home country's GDP in 2023, is based where?

It traces back to two 1920s insulin laboratories and became Europe's most valuable company.

Diabetes insipidus, despite the name, is caused by a problem with which hormone?

It is unrelated to diabetes mellitus, though both produce large amounts of urine.

Which pop star was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 13 in 2005?

He went on to co-found the advocacy group Beyond Type 1.

Damage to the retina from diabetes is the most common cause of blindness in which group?

Diabetes also damages the kidneys, nerves and cardiovascular system if untreated.

Apollinaire Bouchardat saw sugar vanish from patients' urine during 1870 rationing in which city?

John Rollo had first reported success with dietary restriction back in 1797.

Roughly what share of obese type 2 diabetics achieve full remission if they lose and keep off 15 kg?

The catch is that most patients cannot achieve or sustain that much weight loss.

Which animals do not develop diabetes, thanks to a very high tolerance for blood sugar?

Mammals and reptiles can get it, and there are hints that amphibians can too. In pets it is most often seen in middle-aged dogs and cats.

Galen considered diabetes rare, saying he had seen how many cases in his whole career?

He called it 'diarrhea of the urine'. Its rarity then may reflect Roman diets or the fact that symptoms were only noticed late in the disease.

Sushruta and Charaka first split diabetes into two types, around 400–500 CE, where?

One type was linked to youth and the other to being overweight, a split that modern medicine would not formalise for another 1,500 years.

The long-acting insulin NPH was developed in which decade?

It followed two decades after Banting and Best purified insulin in Toronto, and remains in use today.

The FDA approved the first continuous glucose monitor in which year?

Medtronic's first MiniMed sampled glucose every ten seconds and could be worn for up to 72 hours; Dexcom's rival followed in 2006.

The hormone name 'glucagon', coined in 1922, is a portmanteau of 'glucose' and what?

C. Kimball and John R. Murlin named the component of pancreatic extracts that briefly raised blood sugar before insulin lowered it.

Type 1 diabetes incidence in children is highest in which part of the world?

Rates there run 30 to 60 new cases per 100,000 children a year, against 1 to 3 in China and much of Asia.

Which small dog breed is singled out as especially likely to develop diabetes?

Female dogs are about twice as likely to be affected as males, and middle-aged animals are hit most often.

Aretaeus's ancient account of diabetes reached the West in a 1552 edition from which city?

That first Latin edition arrived some 1,300 years after he wrote it; he blamed the disease on moisture and coldness.

As of 2020, roughly what share of all US adults had prediabetes?

Prediabetes is an early stage of the disease; across the US adult population the lifetime chance of developing type 2 is about 40%.