Finding the chase and cutting to it

I’m unwell.  I run a low body temperature, but when my body was doing everything it could to generate a fever on Tuesday, I took the hint, so while the body is weak, the mind is racing.

Type 1 diabetes means that all the mechanisms my body is relying on to get a fever are being over-riden by my desire to not die early, develop a blood clot (resulting in stroke, blindness, septicemia, or a heart attack), or diabetic ketoacidosis – which is a ticket to a hospital ward and a reasonable question of “what went wrong?”.

So it takes much longer to develop a fever and kick an infection to the line.

But type 1 is “just type 1 diabetes”, everyone knows that’s what happens when we’re sick 😉

What are you whinging about now?

Just that, we’re not that usual.  Rare disease day is coming and I was a little curious about what makes something a rare disease.  Aren’t you?

I guess, but your thing definitely doesn’t count!

That was my thought.  But this is a question of scale.  I’m one of around 8·4million in the world with type 1 with type 1 diabetes in 2021 (best confirmed numbers) against a world population of 7.888 billion (a 1000 million).  That means an prevalance of 0.106% of the world’s population or 10 of us per 10,000.

So, we’re not that far off meeting the World Health Organisation’s definition – an incidence of 6.5 (or less) per 10,000 or 0.065% of the population.

I’m a bit of a numbers geek, and as I said, it is all about scale.

Let’s look at Europe as per The US Government’s National Library of Medicine, Prevalence and incidence of Type 1 diabetes in the world, 2020, Table 2.
Only one place in the world where type 1 has a higher prevalance of 6.5 people per 10,000 in the world and that’s in Asia.

In my humbe Europe, we only count for 2.12 people in 10,000.

The numbers fall down when we look at the UK.  We have around 7.5 people per 10,000.  Common as muck 😀  Though in Scotland, that rises to 22!

Which is a bit surprising.  And also leads us to the definition of what type 1 is.  An autoimmune condition causing destruction of the beta cells.  Not someone who needs insulin to treat their diabetes.

This might seem petty but it is really important because insulin treatment can be a progression for type 2 diabetes though a sustaintially different and complex condition in its own right.

Those taking insulin (or prescribing it) are not necessarily the best people to ask.

Which leads us naturally to the fact there are three kinds of lie: lies, damned lies, and statistics – Mark Twain.

But no, unusual but not rare for the 29th January.