diabetes

/daɪəˈbiɾiz/

/daɪəˈbitiz/

When a person has the medical condition called diabetes, the body can’t produce enough insulin to process the glucose in the blood.

Diabetes has been known since the first century B.C.E., when a Greek physician, Aretus the Cappadocian, named it diabainein, meaning "a siphon," referring to the excessive urination associated with the disease. The word diabetes was first recorded in 1425, and in 1675, the Greek mellitus, “like honey,” was added, to reflect the sweet smell and taste of the patient’s urine. An unrelated and rare disorder, diabetes insipidus, is usually caused by a hormone deficiency.

Definitions of diabetes

1. noun

   a polygenic disease characterized by abnormally high glucose levels in the blood; any of several metabolic disorders marked by excessive urination and persistent thirst
   types:

   DM, diabetes mellitus

   diabetes caused by a relative or absolute deficiency of insulin and characterized by polyuria

   diabetes insipidus

   a rare form of diabetes resulting from a deficiency of vasopressin (the pituitary hormone that regulates the kidneys); characterized by the chronic excretion of large amounts of pale dilute urine which results in dehydration and extreme thirst

   IDDM, autoimmune diabetes, growth-onset diabetes, insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, juvenile diabetes, juvenile-onset diabetes, ketoacidosis-prone diabetes, ketosis-prone diabetes, type I diabetes

   severe diabetes mellitus with an early onset; characterized by polyuria and excessive thirst and increased appetite and weight loss and episodic ketoacidosis; diet and insulin injections are required to control the disease

   NIDDM, adult-onset diabetes, adult-onset diabetes mellitus, ketoacidosis-resistant diabetes, ketoacidosis-resistant diabetes mellitus, ketosis-resistant diabetes, ketosis-resistant diabetes mellitus, mature-onset diabetes, maturity-onset diabetes, maturity-onset diabetes mellitus, non-insulin-dependent diabetes, non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, type II diabetes

   mild form of diabetes mellitus that develops gradually in adults; can be precipitated by obesity or severe stress or menopause or other factors; can usually be controlled by diet and hypoglycemic agents without injections of insulin

   nephrogenic diabetes insipidus

   diabetes insipidus caused by a failure of the kidney to respond to normal levels of vasopressin

   chemical diabetes, latent diabetes

   a mild form of diabetes mellitus in which there are no overt symptoms but there are abnormal responses to some diagnostic procedures

   type of:

   polygenic disease, polygenic disorder

   an inherited disease controlled by several genes at once