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WHAT IS THE HISTORY OF DIABETES

Diseases with the clinical features of diabetes have been recognised since antiquity. The Ebers papyrus, dating from 1550 BC, describes a polyuric state that resembles diabetes.
The word ‘ diabetes ’ was fi rst used by Aretaeus of Cappadocia in the second century AD. Aretaeus gave a clinical description of the disease, noting the increased urine flow, thirst and weight loss, features that are instantly recognizable today.

The sweet, honey - like taste of urine in polyuric states, which attracted ants and other insects, was reported by Hindu physicians such as Sushrut (Susruta) during the fifth and sixth centuries AD. These descriptions even mention two forms of diabetes, the more common occurring in older, overweight and indolent people, and the other in lean people who did not survive for long. This empirical subdivision predicted the modern classification into type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

Diabetes was largely neglected in Europe until a 17th - century English physician, Thomas Willis (1621 – 75), rediscovered the sweetness of diabetic urine. Willis, who was physician to King Charles II, thought that the disease had been rare in ancient times, but that its frequency was increasing in his age ‘ given to good fellowship ’. Nearly a century later, the Liverpool physician Matthew Dobson
(1735 – 84) showed that the sweetness of urine and serum was caused by sugar. John Rollo (d. 1809) was the first to apply the adjective ‘ mellitus ’ to the disease.

LUPUS CAUSES AND TREATMENT

Lupus is a chronic inflammatory disease that occurs when your body's immune system attacks your own tissues and organs. Inflammation caused by lupus can affect many different body systems — including your joints, skin, kidneys, blood cells, brain, heart and lungs.

Lupus can be difficult to diagnose because its signs and symptoms often mimic those of other ailments. The most distinctive sign of lupus — a facial rash that resembles the wings of a butterfly unfolding across both cheeks — occurs in many but not all cases of lupus.

Some people are born with a tendency toward developing lupus, which may be triggered by infections, certain drugs or even sunlight. While there's no cure for lupus, treatments can help control symptoms.

SYMPTOMS

WHAT IS DIABETES MELLITUS

Diabetes mellitus is a condition of chronically elevated blood glucose concentrations which give rise to its main symptom of passing large quantities of sweet - tasting urine ( diabetes from the Greek word meaning ‘ a siphon ’ , as the body acts as a conduit for the excess fluid, and mellitus from the Greek and Latin for honey). The fundamental underlying abnormality is a net (relative or absent) deficiency of the hormone insulin. Insulin is essentially the only hormone that can lower blood glucose.

There are two categories of diabetes: type 1 is caused by an autoimmune destruction of the insulin - producing β cell of the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas (absolute deficiency); and type 2 is a result of both impaired insulin secretion and resistance to its action – often secondary to obesity (relative deficiency).