Revista de diabetes clínica

Abstracto

Eighty Six Years of Duration of Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus

Joseph Fovenyi

The patient was born in 1927 to a wealthy middle class family from Buda. Before she was born, her maternal uncle died of type 1 diabetes, probably of diabetic ketoacidosis at the age of 22. Her family members were not longlived. She was diagnosed with diabetes in 1932 at the age of five. Her condition was immediately treated with rapidacting (“regular”) insulin, which was administered three times a day. In the mid-thirties, her father purchased a Zeiss polarimeter and the urine collected in three fractions was polarized three times daily and the dose of insulin was adjusted to the urine glucose levels obtained. In the early forties, they switched to a once daily mixture of protamine zinc and regular insulin. Her subsequent insulin therapy will be discussed below. In the thirties until the late forties, she maintained the usual ketogenic diet at the time with up to 60-70 grams of carbohydrates.