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PARIS: Malnutrition can cause its own form of diabetes, health experts said Thursday, calling for “type 5 diabetes” to be recognized globally to help fight the disease in countries already struggling with poverty and starvation.
The most common form of diabetes, type 2, can be caused by obesity and occurs when adults become resistant to the hormone insulin. Type 1, mostly diagnosed in childhood, arises when the pancreas does not produce enough insulin.
But diabetes researchers have been tracking another form of the disease, which often appears in people aged under 30. It also affects insulin production but is less severe than type 1.
And rather than being linked to being overweight or obese like type 2, it affects people who are underweight because they do not eat enough.
A paper published in medical journal The Lancet Global Health shows that more than 25 million people suffer from this “type 5 diabetes,” mostly in developing countries.
“We call upon the international diabetes community to recognize this distinct form of the disease,” the authors wrote, reflecting a consensus reached by the International Diabetes Federation earlier this year.
The experts settled on calling this form of diabetes type 5, though types 3 and 4 have not been officially recognized.
Diabetes driven by malnutrition is not a new discovery — in the 1980s and 1990s, the World Health Organization classified a form of “malnutrition-related diabetes.”
But the UN agency abandoned this classification in 1999 due to a lack of agreement among experts about whether undernourishment alone was enough to cause diabetes.
Since then, numerous studies in countries including Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Uganda, Pakistan and Rwanda have indicated that this is possible.
The exact link between malnutrition and this strand of diabetes remains unknown. The efficacy of existing diabetes treatments that do not focus on weight loss on type 5 is also unclear.
The best way to fight the disease involves supporting programs already working to combat poverty and hunger, the authors of the paper said.
This includes giving people access to “low-cost, energy-dense staple foods high in protein and complex carbohydrates” such as lentils, legumes, oil-enriched cereals and fortified grains, they added.

DAMASCUS: Syria’s foreign minister arrived in Washington on Thursday, the first official visit at that level in more than 25 years as the US makes a pro-Damascus policy push, lifting sanctions and mediating between the new Islamist rulers and Israel. Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan Al-Shibani will meet US lawmakers to discuss the lifting of remaining US sanctions on his country, Senator Lindsey Graham was quoted as saying by Axios. Two sources familiar with the trip confirmed the visit to Reuters.
It comes after some senior US diplomats focused on Syria were abruptly let go from their posts amid Washington’s pivot, as the US seeks to integrate its longtime Syrian Kurdish allies with the central administration of President Ahmed Al-Sharaa.
The United States has also been mediating between Israel and Syria. Sharaa, who is due to visit New York next week for the UN General Assembly, said negotiations to reach a security pact with Israel could yield results “in the coming days.”
The United States had placed crippling sanctions on Syria since 2011 after former President Bashar Assad, an ally of Iran and Russia, cracked down protests against him that triggered an almost 14-year civil war.
After he was toppled by Sharaa’s forces in a quick sweep in December, Washington and Damascus have been working to warm up ties, with US President Donald Trump announcing that he would move to lift the sanctions after meeting Sharaa in May.