Many diagnoses of children with diabetes can be missed, says report

A new study into children with diabetes has found that many diagnoses of children that have type 1 diabetes can be missed by doctors, unless there are more obvious symptoms such as stomach pain, vomiting and rapid breathing .
With around 29,000 children being diagnosed with this type of diabetes each year, it was shown that a quarter of these only found out they had the disease once they had suffered a diabetic ketoacidosis attack, which exhibits these symptoms and can sometimes lead to the child falling into a coma.
The study, by Dr Julie Edge, a consultant paediatric diabetologist at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, and due to be published in the British Medical Journal, revealed that 35 per cent of children who were diagnosed with type 1 diabetes before the age of five had suffered an attack.
It has also recommended that parents should take their children to visit their GP if they see any signs associated with type 1 diabetes, such as bed wetting and frequent urination.
There are concerns that, because bed wetting can be a common problem for children, parents can sometimes think that it is due to stress rather than something more serious, such as diabetes.