More women skip diabetes injections

UP TO a third of young women with diabetes are skipping insulin injections to lose weight, risking blindness, heart disease and death.

One woman said she could lose up to half a stone in a week by skipping injections.

Consultant endocrinologist Dr Graham Roberts said while it was difficult to know precisely how many young women under the age of 30 were abusing their insulin to lose weight, he believed it was up to one in three. He said diabetes was becoming more common in young people. “It is predominately type 2 form diabetes that is increasing, but type 1 diabetes has always occurred in young people.”

Treatment for the type 1 form of the disease always involves insulin injections, while type 2 usually involves tablets and possibly insulin injections.

Dr Roberts said the insulin injections were associated with weight gain and teenagers, who were very conscious of their weight, seemed to respond to this. He had come across a number of patients, particularly teenage girls, who were deliberately not taking enough insulin because they were concerned about weight.

Dr Roberts said a report published in 2002 called Diabetes Care — Securing the Future, recommended that every regional diabetes centre should have access to a clinical psychologist, but that was not the situation in most parts of the country.

He also said only two of the country’s five big cities, Galway and Dublin, had diabetes day-care centres where there was a range of specialist services available.

“We should be considering establishing diabetes day-care centres in Cork, Waterford and Limerick, so that young people who put their health at risk can be properly treated,” he said.

There are about 200,000 people in Ireland known to have diabetes, but the true figure is probably more than double that.