Specialist Katarina Limpert said today that the General Directorate of Health is evaluating a pilot project to track type 1 diabetes in children, adding that the goal is for it to be implemented at the age of five at the time of vaccination.
“In Portugal, we have a very good vaccination system and, therefore, we will benefit from the vaccination program to screen children around the age of five,” Catarina Limpert told Lusa on the sidelines of the 50th anniversary. International Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes (ISPAD) meeting, held in Lisbon.
In response to a question about whether diabetes is still detected late, the pediatric endocrinologist and diabetes specialist stated that the disease is detected when children are already in a coma and when that happens “the pancreas stops working.”
“Now we can, by detecting the antibodies, understand whether or not this child will develop diabetes. If we detect these antibodies, we know that within x years, usually after five years, a child under 10 will For years, he was completely diabetic and confirmed that he had diabetes.
Hence the importance of the pilot project, which has not yet been approved, but the General Directorate of Security is already evaluating it.
“We believe that the matter will progress,” said the professor of pediatrics at Nova College of Medicine, noting that the number of children infected with the disease is “increasing.”
According to Catarina Limpert, there are about 38,000 people with type 1 diabetes in Portugal, of whom 3,000 to 4,000 are under the age of 15.
“The biggest problem is that this disease affects very young children. It is a chronic disease that is difficult to deal with on a daily basis, and therefore, for parents and families, keeping these children healthy is always a huge effort.” And highlighted.
Because it is a “very complex” disease that requires care, it also affects children's daily lives at school, sports and friends.
On the other hand, there is still “a huge stigma, a lot of shame about having this disease,” because kids have to give insulin, they have to count what they eat, they have to look at sensors and see if their blood sugar levels are okay. .
“There is always a sign on these families and on these children when there is someone with this disease,” he lamented, highlighting the progress made in schools in integrating these children.
Until recently there were great difficulties, parents stopped working so that they could be in schools to give insulin to children and give them food.
He added: “But the General Directorate of Public Security and the National Diabetes Program made a great effort to make special support for these children mandatory in schools, and this has become a decree law.”
“Inclusion and innovation in childhood diabetes” is the theme of the ISPAD annual meeting, which runs until Saturday at the Lisbon Congress Centre, where around 2,000 researchers and health professionals from around the world will gather.
The specialist said that she chose this topic because, in terms of innovation, all the techniques used in the treatment of type 1 diabetes are discussed, which “requires a very special technique for continuous insulin infusion and continuous monitoring.”
“Automatic technology associated with artificial intelligence and the latest software are discussed,” as are new treatments that are emerging.
He stressed, “We are witnessing a turning point in diabetes in children, as new medications appear that work to treat the cause of the disease.”
According to Katharina Limbert, we are moving from the point where people are given insulin to stay alive, to the point of preventing disease, stopping the process of immune destruction.
“There are already immunomodulatory drugs that delay the onset of diabetes, and for this reason, we need to track people and children, and that is why diabetes screening projects are starting all over the world and in Portugal as well,” he concluded.
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