Published in:
Open Access
01-08-2009 | Research Letter
Referral rates for diagnostic testing support an incidence of permanent neonatal diabetes in three European countries of at least 1 in 260,000 live births
Authors:
A. S. Slingerland, B. M. Shields, S. E. Flanagan, G. J. Bruining, K. Noordam, A. Gach, W. Mlynarski, M. T. Malecki, A. T. Hattersley, S. Ellard
Published in:
Diabetologia
|
Issue 8/2009
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Excerpt
To the Editor: Surveys of neonatal diabetes in the UK and Germany from more than a decade ago reported an incidence of 1 in 400,000–450,000 live births [
1,
2]. The permanent form of neonatal diabetes mellitus (PNDM) accounted for about half the cases, equating to a PNDM incidence of 1 in 800,000–900,000 live births. The definition of neonatal diabetes used in these publications was a diagnosis of diabetes within 4 weeks [
1] or 6 weeks [
2] of birth. HLA genotype analysis has shown that permanent diabetes diagnosed within the first 6 months of life is PNDM rather than type 1 diabetes [
3]. Using a definition of diagnosis before 6 months, the incidence of PNDM was recently calculated at 1 in 214,000 live births from the Slovakian diabetes register [
4]. We examined the incidence rates of PNDM in three further European countries. …
