I am a parent of a child who is 11 who may or may not have diabetes. He is only 70 pounds, has Asthma and is fairly active (plays football and wants to start Karate). He has had four A1C test with the following results in order; 5.8,6.1,5.4 and most recently 5.7. While I know these numbers are not extremely high they are abnormal with the exception of the 5.4. His pediatrician is referring him to a pediatric endocrinologist. Is the pre-diabetes or something else? Any insight is appreciated.
My suggestion would be to get a blood glucose meter, and do several tests, including fasting/am, before and after meals, and log them along with details of what was eaten, how active he was, of if sick/not feeling well. If you have those details, for your first endo appointment, it would provide much better information than just the A1Cs.
There are some low-cost meters such as Reli-on or True Metrix.
You could also try just using urine strips to check for glucose in urine, but BGs must be quite high (180-200+) before it shows positive on those tests. So a BG meter would be more helpful information.
Do you ever notice excessive thirst or being very tired ?
Has he been losing weight ?
What is the timeframe the A1Cs were taken ?
I think it is always good to keep an eye on things. Sometimes tests, even the A1c can come in abnormal and they may not mean anything. There is a great deal of individual variation. That being said when diabetes happens your blood sugars become abnormally elevated. While children can get Type 2, if is generally associated with being overweight (which your son is not). Some ethnic groups also have Type 2 forms not associated with weight.
The real concern is that your son might have Type 1. In children Type 1 is usually fast onset. Your son has had four A1c tests, probably over 2-4 years. Is that right? That doesn’t sound like fast onset.
Seeing a pediatric endocrinologist is absolutely the right thing to do. You are doing this before any real full blown diabetes might happen and you are going into the future doing everything you can and should do. And endo will likely order some tests (antibody tests, c-peptide, etc) which can determine whether your son has emerging Type 1. Unfortunately, if he does have Type 1 we don’t have any way of reversing or curing Type 1 at this time.
But I would tell you that today, diabetes (and particularly Type 1) is manageable. You can take care of yourself (or your child) and lead a normal, long happy life.
ps. And your endo may simply tell you that the test result don’t suggest anything is wrong, they are just individual variations.
I am not sure if I can give you a lot of information. My son was 11 when he was diagnosed as a T1D, and is now 12. Retrospectively, his symptoms were obvious yet I missed them: drinks a lot, wakes up multiple times at night to pee, energy highs and lows, started napping after school, enormous appetite but no gain in weight.
As @Brian_BSC mentioned, T2 Diabetes is not a common diagnosis with thin kids, and T1 diabetes is the one to fear. My kid’s A1c was in the 12% when he was diagnosed. It is possible that yours may be in the very early onset phase - but it is typically fast enough onset that it would be a bit surprising. Either way, seeing an endo is the best thing, but there is no need to worry until then.
As the father of a T1D kid very close in age to yours, I can tell you that (1) this is not a sickness you would wish on any kid, particularly your own, but (2) it is also not a sickness that will kill him or radically change the way he will lead his/her life. What it does require is a great amount of discipline in your every day life, day-in, day-out, with no exception possible. But they can lead a normal life (mine does, and practices 4 sports all year round) and eat anything they want, including ice cream (!) particularly before the age of 20, as long as they dose for it.
Hope this turns out to be nothing at all! Feel free to PM me if you want to talk live.
The main concern would be Type 1 Diabetes if your son is active and is not overweight, but there is also MODY, or maturity onset diabetes of the young, which is a congenital form of diabetes that can often be less severe than type 1 and look more like type 2 in terms of treatments. That’s something that would manifest itself young (usually at birth), though.
Also, If he has no other symptoms of diabetes and finger prick tests show normal blood sugars, I would check to see if it’s some other thing. I’m not sure, but I would suspect that other conditions, such as polycythemia or anemia, or anything really that affects red blood cells, could conceivably also affect A1C. That’s because A1C is measuring how much of the hemoglobin in the blood is covered with sugar molecules. Anything that changes the hemoglobin, or how long red blood cells live before being regenerated, could conceivably affect it.
