Diabetes and Insulin Therapy
The distinction between insulin-dependent diabetes and insulin-independent diabetes is a distinction made in an attempt to classify the various forms of diabetes mellitus on the basis of whether or not they need to resort to insulin replacement therapy.
First of all, it should be clarified that any form of diabetes mellitus may require continuous or occasional insulin therapy, at whatever stage it is found; therefore, the use of insulin per se cannot classify the patient. The traditional definition, in many respects still in vogue, which attributes the "insulin-dependent adjective to type I, or juvenile diabetes mellitus, and the" insulin-independent adjective "appears inappropriate , type II or senile diabetes.
Age and Diabetes
In reality, even the adjective juvenile or senile is inappropriate, given that type I diabetes is an autoimmune disease, which usually appears in childhood and manifests itself in puberty. The total or sub-total destruction of pancreatic beta cells, which follows, requires the chronic injection of insulin for therapeutic purposes, hence the term insulin-dependent (without insulin the disease would be fatal).
Type II diabetes, on the other hand, usually arises in the mature age and is often randomly highlighted in the course of blood tests (hyperglycemia); it is typical, but not exclusive, of overweight people, it arises gradually and in the advanced stages it is always present a "more or less severe insufficiency of insulin. Therefore, although in most cases the treatment involves the simple intake of oral hypoglycemic agents (hence the "insulin-independent adjective), even type II diabetes mellitus may require occasional insulin treatment (for example in conjunction with important stress, both of physical and psychological character, such as trauma, myocardial infarction, acute cerebro-vascular episodes), or continued.
