Other Types Of Diabetes - Types Of Diabetes: Diabetes A Plan For Living

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Other types of diabetes

Diseases or chemicals that damage or destroy the pancreas can also cause diabetes. Examples include pancreatitis, pancreatic cancer, and hemochromatosis, a disorder in which excessive amounts of iron accumulate in the pancreas and other organs.

Surgical removal of the pancreas, which is sometimes necessary to treat chronic pancreatitis or pancreatic cancer, causes a form of type 1 (insulin-deficient) diabetes. Some medications, such as corticosteroids, diuretics, beta blockers, or a new class of drugs called "atypical" or second-generation antipsychotics, originally developed to treat schizophrenia, can increase insulin resistance or decrease insulin secretion. Such drugs may thus precipitate type 2 diabetes in people who are susceptible.

Toxic substances known to cause beta cell destruction include the rat poison pyriminil (Vacor); pentamidine (Pentam), a drug used to treat a type of pneumonia associated with AIDS; and asparaginase (Elspar), a cancer drug. All can cause a form of insulin-deficient diabetes.

Types of diabetes: 5 of 5

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Last updated:	January 23, 2007

Medical content reviewed by the Faculty of the Harvard Medical School. Harvard Health Publications, Copyright © 2007 by President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. Used with permission of StayWell.

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