Mandatory Blood Glucose Testing for Australian Children at checkups

Type 1 and LADA
1

Hi there,


We have started a petition that we intend to present to the Australian Medical Association and the Health Minister to introduce mandatory BGL testing for children at every checkup. There are too many horror stories about children in PICU with DKA because of late diagnosis of type 1 diabetes. The death of a 6 year old girl was one death too many. Please sign our petition (you don't have to be Australian!) and support our children.It takes less than a minute! http://www.gopetition.com/petition/38298.html

Thanks so much!

Kate
2

Happy to sign, but the link doesn’t work.

Wishing A1c testing was part of standard blood panels.

3

Oh thank you so much for letting me know, Gerri!! Here is the link :slight_smile: And thank you for signing! xx

4

5

The link is now corrected, Gerri. :slight_smile: Many thanks again.

6

Done. My husband signed also. Wishing this effort great success!

7

I would like to see this here in the US, honestly. My children’s pedi uses a urine check, but I find it concerning that when I can’t get one of my kids to produce a sample, they just brush it off like it’s no big deal. As a PWD worried about my kids, I do think it’s a big deal.

They do a fingerstick hemocrit (iron level) so why not just run a BG at the same time? It makes no sense that they don’t.

8

  1. I’m not sure this would be effective. What percentage of kids would be spotted by testing once a year - I don’t think that many since it doesn’t take long from onset of T1 to ultra-high BG. I believe it was only a couple weeks between onset and when I became so sick my parents took me to a doctor (vomiting with a BG found to be off scale (over 800)). I do know that my previous doctor’s appointment had been many months before that. And there’s the danger that having been tested will give parents a false sense of security - “he was tested the last time we were at the doctors office so it can’t be diabetes - it must just be the flu”.

  2. It might be just as effective, and probably cheaper, to test urine and not blood. You could include that as an alternative as part of the law - the law might get more support if the cost per test was cheaper. (The cost will probably be a big issue, since T1 is not that common and the odds of detecting it even in those who will eventually develop it are not that high due to 1.)

  3. There is an even more expensive test (insulin antibodies) that is done as part of trialnet (Joslin and other sites) that would be effective once a year. But that test is even more expensive and requires more than a fingerstick (venous blood) and probably would not get support. But it would be a much better test to use if the test could be made affordable.

  4. Personally I think a more important “law” would be for Doctors or Public Service Announcement to explain the most typical warning signs of diabetes to all parents - drinking lots of water and excessive urination. My parents knew nothing about diabetes and had no clue - and I think this is not unusual since so many T1’s have no family history of the disease.

9

As a parent with diabetes, the odds are higher for your kids than for the general population. So I wouldn’t count on your doctor to look for the warning signs of diabetes - you have the knowledge to detect the warning signs and check them yourself if needed. (I’m sure you do this already).

Also, you might consider looking into trialnet (at Joslin in Boston and other places) where they look for insulin antibodies of first-degree relatives of T1’s. (They do not do genetic testing though, unless they detect the insulin antibodies). I did this with my kids (thankfully none have yet developed it - hopefully they never will!).