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Diabetes Bites Newsletter

misdiagnosis of type 2 diabetes

Last month, we asked you to identify what the term MARD stands for.

Congratulations to Brandy Rooks of Slave Lake, Alberta, Canada for being the first to answer correctly. 

Brandy has a daughter with T1D, and used her daughter’s diagnosis as motivation to pursue a degree in nursing. 

ANSWER: MARD stands for Meal Absolute Relative Difference.  It is commonly used to describe the average discrepancy between CGM values and laboratory values taken at the same time.  The most creative response award goes to Bekki Weston, who thinks MARD stands for “My Accuracy Really Depends.”  Man, is she right!

At this point, the MARD for most CGM systems hovers around 8-11%.  MARD is very different from the standards used to evaluate blood glucose meters, called ISO.  A MARD of 10% means that the average discrepancy between CGM and lab values is 10%, so 50% of the results could be off by more than 10%.  An ISO of 10% means that at least 95% of the readings are less than 10% off from the lab value (or within 10 points of the lab value if the reading is below 75 mg/dl).  So like it or not, blood glucose meters remain considerably more accurate and precise than CGM systems.


NEW QUESTION for MAY:

Everyone with diabetes probably remembers their diagnosis quite vividly.  Unfortunately, not everyone is diagnosed correctly.  For example, people who develop type-1 diabetes as adults are often misdiagnosed as having type-2 diabetes.  This can be very dangerous, since DKA can develop if no insulin is present in the body, and the “honeymoon” phase of type-1 diabetes depends on early treatment with insulin.

So here’s your question:  According to a study at the University of Exeter (England), what percentage of adults with type-1 diabetes are misdiagnosed as having type-2?