I was diagnosed with Type 1 at the age of 37 yearsold and have been dealing with the “condition” for approximately 2 and half years now. But I have just found out this week that my older brother has also just been diagnosed with Type 1 at the age of 41.
We are both healthy and active with no serious illnesses to date and no family history of the diabetes.
Has anyone ever heard of such a case like this? Surely it cant be coincidence, my Endo had no explanation for my diagnoses and just put it down to bad luck…now I am beginning to wonder?
I know it is not that uncommon for siblings to receive the diabetes diagnosis. I’ve read about it many times in young children. It doesn’t seem surprising to me that you and your brother both came down with T1D. Was your case slow onset? Did they designate it as LADA, or latent autoimmune diabetes in adults.
I became insulin dependent (first bout with DK at 34 but had some BG problems since my early 20’s. My brother showed some sines of high BG during his 50’s and was completely insulin dependent by 60, he turned 70 in August. No one else in our immediate family’s have BG issues but we do have
some distant relatives that where diabetics but they where 3 generations past.
I cannot speak for my brother but we are both Veterans and received a mixture of vaccines before
deployment and during our service deployment.
I’ve heard other similar stories. I think it may reinforce the idea that environmental factors are a big part of what can trigger the autoimmune response. It could be something you were both exposed to when you were young that took years to ultimately manifest as the autoimmune condition.
Unfortunately it is not unusual for adults to be Dx’d with rapid onset type 1. What is better than when I was first Dx’d is that the MD’s make the correct Dx. Because of age - I was 30 years old - the MD assumed type 2 (although I had no risk factors for type 2). Anyway, if I recall correctly, there has been work done on indentifying the immune system gene that causes the auto-immune system to go haywire. Nor success treating it to stop the attack nor a vaccine, but at least things are happening. For me, I had a real bad case of strep, went to the MD, got the antibiotics, and together with my immune system, got rid of the strepo. Then within a month it was the classic type 1 symptoms - down from 110 lbs to 95 (I’m 5’6", slim cuz I was a ballet dancer). Got the type 2 Dx, went into DKA and got the correct Dx. I hear that over 50% of the new cases of type 1 are indeed adults. Since there has been success (or some success anyway) identifying the gene involved in the immune system attack on the beta cells, it doesn’t surprise me that siblings would also be Dx’d.
