Estimation of the Prevalence of Adult - onset Insulin Dependent Diabetes Mellitus

Park, Y S; Lee, K J; Kim, T W; Kim, M H; Lee, H K; Kim, S Y; Hoh, C S; Min, H K

Abstract

OBJECTIVE
IDDM is an autoimmune disease, which occurs among genetically susceptible individuals. In the Asian populations, it is not uncommon for adult patients with NIDDM to eventually lose beta cell function and develop IDDM. These individuals may be characterized by autoantibodies to GAD and high risk HLA-DQ alleles, which are unlikely to be prevalent among "true" NIDDM cases or in the general population. The objective of the present study was to evaluate and compare the prevalence of these immunogenetic markers in NIDDM patients and healthy non-diabetic individuals from Korea.
METHODS
The prevalence of anti-GAD antibodies and HLA-DQA1 and DQB1 alleles among 121 newly diagnosed NIDDM cases identified from a population-based study in Yonchon, Korea and 100 matohed healthy control subjects were evaluated and compared.
RESULTS
The overall prevalence of anti-GAD antibodies was 1.7% (2 of 121) in patients with previously undiagnosed NIDDM, whereas 1 of 100 controls had positive antibodies. Among those who were positive, their titer of antibodies to GAD were not high. No statistically significant differences in the distributions of either mean levels of anti-GAD or DQA1 and DQB1 alleles were found comparing NIDDM patients to controls.
CONCLUSION
The low prevalence of anti-GAD antibodies and HLA-DQA1 and DQB1 susceptibility alleles among recent-onset NIDDM patients, which was similar to observations in controls, suggests that diabetes in Korean adults is unlikely to have an autoimmune component to its pathogenesis.