Section 4: Reasons For and Against Screening

Knowing Your Child’s Risk Can Reassure You and/or Help You Act Early.

For many people, knowledge is power. If your child’s test results say that they are unlikely to develop type 1 diabetes, you may feel reassured. If your child’s test results say that they are more likely to develop type 1 diabetes, having more certainty may make you feel more empowered to act and take advantage of services available.

Knowing Your Child’s Risk May Cause Worry or Anxiety

If your child’s test results say that they are more likely to develop type 1 diabetes, you may feel worry or anxiety. This is a normal reaction. You will be offered support, but you might still feel worried and anxious.

Screening Gives You Time to Prepare

If your child’s test results say that they are more likely to develop type 1 diabetes, you will have time to prepare by making sure you know what symptoms to look for and possibly make life choices, like making sure your family has good supplemental health insurance or that you live somewhere with good public health insurance.

Screening Might Give You False Reassurance

If your child’s test results say that they are unlikely to develop type 1 diabetes, you may feel falsely reassured. If they are one of the very rare few who develop type 1 diabetes despite a negative screening result, you may feel betrayed, and your child might have a more difficult diagnosis than they otherwise would have had.

Better Health for your Child

Detecting type 1 diabetes earlier is associated with better health. People who are diagnosed before their immune system destroys too many of the insulin-producing cells tend to have an easier time dealing with type 1 diabetes throughout their life. As a result, they may be less likely to develop complications of diabetes like blindness, heart problems, or kidney disease.

Over-monitoring

Especially if your child’s test results say that they are more likely to develop type 1 diabetes, you may find yourself watching them all the time for subtle symptoms. Being constantly on the alert for things like, “Is my child peeing more than usual?” or “Does my child seem more thirsty than usual?” could negatively affect you, your child, and your relationship with your child. Some families may also refuse screening to avoid detection of a risk that, in reality, would never have caused a problem or led to any useful action.

Better Health Care for Your Child

If your child’s test results say that they are more likely to develop type 1 diabetes, you will have access to follow-up care and you will get education about what to watch for. This will allow high blood sugars to be found early and will probably help your child avoid getting very sick with diabetic ketoacidosis at diagnosis.

Unproven Approaches

If you are worried about your child developing type 1 diabetes, you may find yourself tempted to use unproven approaches that offer no benefit to your child (for example, dramatic changes to your family’s eating habits or unproven medicines) and may even cause harm (for example, disordered eating or harmful side effects of medicines.)

Potential Access to Preventive Care

If your child’s test results say that they are more likely to develop type 1 diabetes, they may be eligible for preventive treatments (immunotherapies)* that may delay the onset of type 1 diabetes. They may also be eligible for prevention trials, which may or may not prevent them from developing type 1 diabetes. You will be offered the opportunity to sign up online to be alerted of all options available for your child.

Potential Negative Impact on Insurability

By Canadian law, genetic tests cannot be used to decide whether or not someone can get life insurance. However, there is no such legal protection when it comes to antibody tests. This means that if your child has antibodies suggesting they may develop type 1 diabetes, it might someday impact their eligibility for life, health, or travel insurance.** It will not impact their provincial or territorial health insurance in Canada.