Diabetes or, more precisely, “diabetes mellitus” is a complex metabolic disease in which there is an increase in blood glucose levels (hyperglycemia) resulting from insufficient insulin production by the Langerhans cells (beta-cells) found in the so-called “pancreatic islets.”
In addition to being scarce, in those with diabetes, insulin may be used inefficiently by peripheral tissues.
There are three main forms of diabetes:
- Type 1 diabetes is the least common form, typically arises in childhood or adolescence, and depends on a malfunction of the immune system, which recognizing pancreatic beta-cells as foreign attacks and destroys them.
- Type 2 diabetes mellitus is the classic diabetes of adults and the elderly and is due to a deficit in insulin secretion by pancreatic beta-cells in the islets of Langerhans, associated with resistance of the body’s tissues to the action of insulin (insulin resistance).
Type 2 diabetes is very common and increasingly prevalent in the population: 3 million people in Italy have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and an additional 1.5 million are estimated to have the disease without knowing it. - Gestational diabetes is a transient form of diabetes that affects only women and is established, by definition, during pregnancy, and then regresses after the birth of the baby, without creating further problems.
However, women who have contracted it are at an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes in subsequent years. Gestational diabetes is quite similar to type 2 diabetes.
