Identifying the signs of pet diabetes

In honor of National Pet Diabetes Awareness Month, Jessica Pritchard, VMD, MS, DACVIM (SAIM), clinical assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, interviewed with dvm360 to give an overview of pet diabetes and what symptoms to look out for.

The following is a partial transcript of the video.

Jessica Pritchard, VMD, MS, DACVIM (SAIM): Type 1 diabetes is due to an absolute deficiency of insulin. So that pet just no longer has enough functioning beta cells to release insulin and so they are a diabetic. And we see this most commonly in dogs. Type 2 diabetes is a combination of both a loss of beta cells, so a loss of insulin, and insulin resistance. And that resistance can be caused by a number of different things. So in cats, which are the species that we typically see with type 2 diabetes in vet med, a lot of that insulin resistance comes from obesity, because we've taken these creatures that were made to be outdoors, hunting, moving all the time and made them our house cats that sit on our laps, and we don't really expect them to do a lot. Also glucose toxicity, so just being hyperglycaemic causes insulin resistance, as well.