Diabetes, diabetes mellitus as a medical term, hereinafter referred to as diabetes, in our country is a common metabolic disorder.
Currently there are about 300,000 people with diabetes in the Netherlands known, but we know that for every known diabetic is an unknown.
Knowing that there also is a huge global increase in the number of people with diabetes we can expect that in 2010 some 1 million Dutch this condition!
There is a distinction between the form that usually occurs at a younger age and almost always requires insulin therapy (type 1 diabetes mellitus) and the form is seen in old age, where we speak of type 2 diabetes mellitus.