Identifying Maturity-onset Diabetes of the Young in Emirati Patients

Diabetes Mellitus is a disease that affects nearly 1 in 5 people in United Arab Emirates and is one of leading causes of death and disability. The main reason for this condition is either relative or near complete deficiency of essential hormone made by our pancreas called "insulin", which is required to utilize blood sugar (glucose), and insulin shortage leads to increased blood glucose. The common types of this condition include type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (the most common with almost 90% of all diabetes patients having this condition), which is related to mismatch of body requirements and production of essential hormone called insulin (relative deficiency) and type 1 diabetes, in which body's own defense system causes of destruction of insulin producing cells in the pancreas (near complete deficiency of insulin). However, in younger age group (below the age of 35) there is another type of diabetes which affects nearly 1 out 1000 people and is Maturity onset diabetes of the young (MODY). MODY is a condition passed by parents in 50% of the kids due to an affected single gene and most common forms of MODY do not require any Insulin treatment. However as type 1 Diabetes is generally identified in younger age group, 80% of patient who have MODY cannot be diagnosed and are labelled with other forms of diabetes instead, and may receive unnecessary insulin injections. Although, there has been a lot of research done in the west on prevalence of MODY in white/Caucasian population, the studies in Middle East are minimal. Also, in the white/Caucasian population, a reliable risk calculator has been developed that predicts the risk of having MODY, which if found to be high, is then confirmed by genetic testing for MODY. There is no study available on presence of MODY or on the reliability of the MODY risk calculator among young Emirati population. There is also no data on MODY being misdiagnosed as other forms of diabetes in Emirati population.

This study proposal aims to address this gap of knowledge and assess the reliability of MODY calculator in young Emirati patients with diabetes and to see if any MODY patient exist in Diabetes clinics of Tawam hospital Abu Dhabi, who may have been misdiagnosed as type 1 or type 2.