Diabetes is derived from the Greek word διαβαίνειν, diabaínein that literally means "passing through," or "siphon," a reference to one of diabetes' major symptoms—excessive urine production. In 1675 Thomas Willis added mellitus from the Latin word meaning a sweet taste. This had been noticed long before in ancient times by the Greeks, Chinese, Egyptians, and Indians. In 1776 Matthew Dobson confirmed the sweet taste was because of an excess of a kind of sugar in the urine and blood of people with diabetes.
The ancient Indians tested for diabetes by observing whether ants were attracted to a person's urine, and called the ailment "sweet urine disease" (Madhumeha). The Korean, Chinese, and Japanese words for diabetes are based on the same ideographs (糖尿病) and also mean "sweet urine disease." Medieval European doctors tested for it by tasting the urine themselves which was occasionally depicted in Gothic reliefs.[citation needed]
While the term diabetes usually refers to diabetes mellitus, there are several other, rarer, conditions also named diabetes. The most common of these is diabetes insipidus (unquenchable diabetes) in which the urine is not sweet; it can be caused by either kidney (nephrogenic DI) or pituitary gland (central DI) damage.
The term "type 1 diabetes" has universally replaced several former terms, including childhood-onset diabetes, juvenile diabetes, and insulin-dependent diabetes. "Type 2 diabetes" has also replaced several older terms, including adult-onset diabetes, obesity-related diabetes, and non-insulin-dependent diabetes. Beyond these numbers, there is no standard, so a type 2 who has become insulin dependent has sometimes been called type 3, while the same term is also used for gestational diabetes in some cases.
Various sources have defined "type 3 diabetes" as, among others:
* Gestational diabetes (mentioned above)
* Insulin-resistant type 1 diabetes (or "double diabetes")
* Latent autoimmune diabetes of adults (or LADA or "type 1.5" diabetes)
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